Electric car engineering issues

[C1ay]

Originally Posted by Zythryn

Sorry, I jumped a bit ahead of myself.
First, again, you aren't going to flip a switch and have everyone running electric cars. The first few models of pure electrics will likely be bought by people who almost never take a trip longer than the range of the car, or families that will have one electric and one car capable of longer trips.
Two, and this is the part I skipped on, EVs will start to be bought by people concerned by the amount and type of energy we use. As such, I am guessing they will also be people that conserve in other ways.
I do believe there are challenges and that our grid will need expansion, but I don't believe it is as impossible as you are making it sound.

I'm not making it sound impossible. I'm simply pointing out the difference in time it will take to accomplish a change to electric transportation using solely private resources vs public resources. Either will get us there eventually. As Craig pointed out on EV research, and I agreed on supporting infrastructure, we may get there faster with public resources allocated to the task.

[GAHD]

GM needs to die. Quite frankly there are a LOT of alternative automotive companies just itching to get into the market that is TOO controlled by the mega-company.

"bailout" money should instead be used as incentive for these new, greener companies(plural, eggs and baskets) to get their factories cranking out the new generation, and for the switch to a 'quick charge' instead of gas depot standard

Pheonix motorcars
Zenn

Edit:
Yes these manufacturers have STREET LEGAL ready to sell vehicles.
YES they have designed the 5 minute charging ability!
YES they CAN charge 'slowly' off your house power.
YES it saves gas costs because the trucks that top-up your gas stations no longer need to go to the gas station! This allows bulk buyers like powerplants to save more because of reduced and centralized demand!
YES it IS THE RIGHT WAY (IMHO)

[Roadam]

There was a study by the US department of energy that I think said the existing power generation is enough to power the whole vehicle fleet. Not found the reference yet...

Let me pose a question: What does actually use electricity at night? Some factories, disco clubs, Vegas, but I think that mostly it is just lights. If someone would turn all the unnecessary ones off, there would probably be loads of juice available.

There has been a news report that one town in germany actually switched all the lights off and provided a SMS service for the residents to turn on the lights they need.

Smart grid is a must.

[C1ay]

Originally Posted by Roadam

There was a study by the US department of energy that I think said the existing power generation is enough to power the whole vehicle fleet. Not found the reference yet...

According to the last row of this chart for the contiguous U.S., current generating capacity minus current demand yields an estimated 16% margin. That, combined with the fact that rolling blackouts are not uncommon during peak demand times, leads me to believe that the only way current generating capacity would be sufficient is for very carefully managed demand control that makes power available to loads when the excess is available for use.

I would also point out that the same chart lists total generating capacity at 915,292 megawatts and it would be my guess that our total passenger car energy consumption far exceeds 16% of that amount.

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by GAHD

Pheonix motorcars
Zenn
…
Yes these manufacturers have STREET LEGAL ready to sell vehicles.

It depends on what you mean by “street legal”, and what you mean by “ready to sell”.

According to ZENN’s (annoying, effectively unlinkable flash-based ) website,

In accordance FMVSS 500, the ZEN has a regulated top speed of 25 MPH (40 km/h).

, meaning that it’s a “neighborhood electric vehicle”, meaning that it’s legal only on low-speed roads, varying by state and local jurisdiction. In some states this means having a posted speed limit no greater than 35 MPH.

According to Phoenix’s website,

Phoenix Motorcars will release a consumer version of its zero-emission, freeway-speed, green vehicle in 2010.

, so it’s not quite “ready to sell”.

IMHO, however, these are mere quibbles. The real engineering notability of these and similar EVs are their energy storage systems.

Originally Posted by GAHD

YES they have designed the 5 minute charging ability!

For vehicles planned by Phoenix and ZENN, this is potentially true (the manufacturers usually list 6 or 10 minutes as the charge time), due to their licensing of two distinctly different electric storage system.

ZENN plans to use the EEStor “ultracapacitor”. As the term suggests, these are not batteries, which store charge through the movement of ions between poles in an electrolyte, but very large capacitors, which store electrons directly. The greatest concern about the EEStor is that it may be a hoax. Its energy density is orders of magnitude higher than previous ultracapacitors, and has not been demonstrated to work to any third party observer or standards agency. EEStor announced in 8/2008 that despite “having taken longer than intended” to develop, the company is working toward a commercial product as early “as soon as possible in 2009”.

Current ZENN vehicles use lead-acid batteries, requiring about an 8 hour charge to go 35-50 miles.

Phoenix plans to use a Lithium-titanate battery patented and manufactured by Altair Nanotechnologies under the tradename “Nanosafe”. These batteries are variations of conventional lithium ion batteries in which the graphite anode is replaced with “nano-titanate”, apparently a titanium salt (Altairnano is fairly secretive about the precise composition and manufacturing techniques used). They exist, and have been used in experimental applications such as electric dragsters. IMHO, they’re the product of a legitimate technical breakthrough, and are likely to win the marked from conventional li-ion batteries in many applications, not just vehicles.

Due to the difference in anode composition, they can charge and discharge about 30 times faster than graphite anode li-ion batteries, without heating excessively. They should also last about 10 times as long, 9000 vs. 750 charge-discharge cycles.

This PDF document by Altairnano is the best I’ve found on the Nanosafe. In short, its higher current, lower heat, and longer life are due to the molecules of its anode physically moving less during charging and discharging than those in a graphite anode.

Therefore, I amend my withdraw by previous claim

Originally Posted by CraigD

Practically speaking, there’s no current market-ready technology (at least none I know of) that will allow a car-size battery, such as the lithium-ion batteries in the Tesla roadster, to be recharged in 10 minutes. The Tesla, for example, requires at least 3.5 hours (210 minutes) to recharge its 53 kWh battery system, and is capable of this rate only because it has a motor driven liquid cooling system. It’s wise, I think, to assume that electric car recharging will remain an overnight processes for some time to come.

I now do know of a market-ready (or very nearly ready) technology that will allow a large battery system to be recharged in 10 minutes – though a powerful cooling system is still required, not only for the battery, but for its supply cables.

Were I a betting man, my money would be on Li-titanate, or some similar “nano-structured” lithium batteries.

[Roadam]

Some US government site: Energy Information Administration (EIA) - Annual Energy Review

Energy use for transportation versus electrical energy use is about 3 against 4. Average fuel consumption is about 14l/100 km, that gets you about 140 kwh worth of energy on average(35 MJ per liter for gasoline). Electrical cars get from low aptera type 6kwh/100km to 21kwh for those like tesla and heavier cars. Taking 20kwh average that means about 7 times less energy consumption. 61% of the energy consumption is in gasoline which powers mostly cars, and those could be replaced.

So from those 3 parts of energy, 60% to be replaced nets 2, which given that EVs use by my estimation 7 times less gives 0.29 parts. Compared to previous electric energy use, this figure represents about 8%.

Its a crude approximation. As all of mine always are

/edit:

I dont know if that is average fuel consumption of cars or average consumption per miles driven (some cars drive more), but since many cars are actually SUVs... I cant imagine it.

[GAHD]

Originally Posted by CraigD

It depends on what you mean by “street legal”, and what you mean by “ready to sell”.According to Phoenix’s website,

Phoenix Motorcars will release a consumer version of its zero-emission, freeway-speed, green vehicle in 2010.

, so it’s not quite “ready to sell”.

Phoenix currently sells "fleet vehicles"

Originally Posted by phoenix

Powered by the revolutionary Altairnano lithium titanate battery pack, Phoenix Motorcars’ zero-emission, all-electric Sport Utility Truck (SUT) can cruise on the freeway at up to 95 m.p.h. while carrying five passengers and a full payload.
The SUT has a low-cost maintenance schedule and will be introduced to fleet managers in 2008.

And the Zenn is currently sold in a LOT of locations (check the retailor map) for inner city driving. let's face it, how many cities do you know where traffic moves faster than 25mph in rush hour. And that's the GOVERNED speed, you can take the limiter off with a little techno-wizardry; though that reduces your total travel per charge.

If GM crashes the Phoenix SUV/SUT could easilly take over GM's manufaturing plants, gut out the gas engine works departments, and crank out cheaper, more economical and eco friendly vehicles.

In My Honest opinion, General Motors Needs to Die, and Die NOW.

[Roadam]

GM really deserves the same fate as his EV1.

[Zythryn]

Originally Posted by C1ay

According to the last row of this chart for the contiguous U.S., current generating capacity minus current demand yields an estimated 16% margin. That, combined with the fact that rolling blackouts are not uncommon during peak demand times, leads me to believe that the only way current generating capacity would be sufficient is for very carefully managed demand control that makes power available to loads when the excess is available for use.

I would also point out that the same chart lists total generating capacity at 915,292 megawatts and it would be my guess that our total passenger car energy consumption far exceeds 16% of that amount.

An important footnote for the available margin is noted:

[4] Capacity Margin is the amount of unused available capability of an electric power system at peak load as a percentage of capacity resources.

I could not find an estimate there, but I would guess this means there is a larger margin during non-peak times.

Even if it were not though some rough calculations give us a better picture.
915,000 megawatts is 915,000,000 kilowatts, 16% of this is about 137,200,000 kilowatts. A heavy vehicle uses a 35 kwh pack.
So that is about 4 million vehicles.
Certainly not the entire light vehicle fleet, but a very healthy number.
And again, I suspect the off peak margin of available electricity is much more, few vehicles will need a recharge every day and they will get more and more efficient as time goes by.
Yes, work needs to be done, but we need to improve the national power grid anyways, do we not?
If used completely each day

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by GAHD

Phoenix currently sells "fleet vehicles"

I’m not sure I agree with your read of that, GAHD. It could be read to mean they would be introducing fleet managers to their maintenance plans, or describing the vehicles to them. I suspect that if they had actually shipped more than a few, they’d announce it in a less ambiguous manner.

I’ll feeler my org’s fleet manager. We promote ourselves as a “queen of green”, and have trialed a few rather wretched EVs over the decades (surprisingly, in the one I had a chance to drive, speed and power were not so bad – I broke 50 MPH before the person responsible for letting me drive it convinced me to let up - but the transmission very clunky, and suspensions bad enough to be dangerous). So hopefully, I’ll be able to confirm or deny the claim that fleets have Phoenix SUTs within a day or a few.

Originally Posted by GAHD

And the Zenn is currently sold in a LOT of locations (check the retailor map) for inner city driving. let's face it, how many cities do you know where traffic moves faster than 25mph in rush hour. And that's the GOVERNED speed, you can take the limiter off with a little techno-wizardry; though that reduces your total travel per charge.

The ZENN is a NEV. Though you could likely trick it out to go faster, it’s not designed for that, so this might be an unwise idea. Although I don’t know much about the FEV laws (like FMVSS 500), I suspect you might get risk trouble with the law if your did this, too.

That said, if I had a NEV, I’d want an easily accessible “governor off (give me all you’ve got)” switch of some sort. Having witnessed tractor trailer trucks going over 60 on 35 MPH speed limit roads, I’d feel like a sitting duck sharing the road with them in a vehicle that couldn’t exceed a bicycle-like 25, but unlike a bike, can’t hop the curb to get out of the way in an emergency.

My main beef with ZENN is that they’re currently pedaling a bit of a bait-and-switch, promoting their contract for exclusive worldwide rights to use EEStor’s ultracapacitors in “all-electric 4-wheeled personal transportation uses for vehicles with a curb weight up to 1,400 kilograms (3,100 lb), net of the battery weight”, while actually selling a NEV with very old-tech lead-acid batteries (actually, slightly worse than old tech, being gel-pack unless you pay extra for valve vented wet cells).

If EEStor’s claims prove true, they and ZENN will likely be big winners in the EV and other electrics and electronics markets. From what I’ve read, though, there’s still a real likelihood that EEStor will prove a multi-million dollar boondoggle

Originally Posted by GAHD

If GM crashes the Phoenix SUV/SUT could easilly take over GM's manufaturing plants, gut out the gas engine works departments, and crank out cheaper, more economical and eco friendly vehicles.

I think GAHD misunderstands how Phoenix makes their cars.

Although I’m unable to find clear information about their factory, Phoenix appears to be a car conversion company, not a car manufacturer. The Phoenix SUT appears to be a SsangYong Actyon with its gas motor replaced with an electric motor, and batteries and control systems added.

Also, although I’m unable to find a populated field for it at any online company profining site, Phoenix Motorcars appears to have on the order of 20 employees. It’s simply too small to take over even the senior management of a large manufacturing company, let alone its actual operations.

Originally Posted by GAHD

In My Honest opinion, General Motors Needs to Die, and Die NOW.

If by die, you mean replace its senior executives and key policy makers with better ones, I agree. If by die, you mean fire all 120,000+ of its US employees and/or about an equal number in other countries, I disagree. The “death” (or "recareering") of so many skilled workers is too appalling for me to wish for.