In Defense of the Electric Car
Since I spent yesterday waxing ecstatic about today's gasoline-powered, internal-combustion-engined cars, I'm going to spend today doing the same with what I think is tomorrow's car--the electric car. Though I should probably start off by clarifying that by "tomorrow" I mean, oh, probably 10-30 years from now.
I'm titling this "In Defense of the Electric Car" not just because it creates a nice parallel with my previous post, but because I really think the concept of an electric car needs defending. Just as today's cars have their share of detractors, so do hybrids and full electric cars. Within the automotive enthusiast community, hybrids and full electric cars seem to have become political and social symbols with pretty significant baggage. While I get that, I think it's a shame--it's not hard to imagine an extremely cool electric car.
Before I start, please realize that I'm not a mechanical or electrical engineer. Nor am I particularly well-informed. I'm just a wild-eyed car enthusiast who loves technology and is armed with excitement and, probably, a lot of bad information. Please feel free to correct my ignorance and flights of fancy in the comments.
Imagine a regular car, but strip out everything needed to generate power and and transfer it to the drive wheels--no engine, no large clutch or transmission assembly, no drive axle, no CV joints, no drivetrain at all. Throw away the current drivetrain, and with it the weight, moving parts, and friction losses inherent in today's drivetrains.
Then imagine a new powertrain--not one large front-mounted engine, causing packaging and styling issues and disturbing the car's weight distribution--but at each wheel a powerful electric motor and a gear reduction (essentially a one-speed transmission that doesn't require a gearchange). Each electric motor is light, highly efficient, highly torquey, extremely responsive to the vehicle's on-board computer, and capable of independent power generation. Why four motors and not one? Well, sending electricity to each wheel requires much less bulk, weight, potential for failure, and loss of efficiency than sending power to each wheel in a traditional all-wheel-drive vehicle.
This design does a few things. To begin with, it cuts weight, bulk, and mechanical complexity, allowing designers to make cars that are lighter, leaner, more aerodynamic, and more spacious inside. As an example, take a look at the innovative Skateboard chassis pictured here--GM unveiled it as a concept in 2005. There are a lot of detail differences here from what I'm talking about--GM has a large electric motor mounted up front, for example--but this should illustrate the amazing packaging potential of a chassis that is largely devoid of today's drivetrain hardware.
Even more exciting from my standpoint are the performance benefits of such a design. As we discussed on Wednesday, electric motors are highly efficient--75-95-percent efficient versus today's engines, which are 25-percent efficient. Electric motors are also very torquey, meaning they have fantastically immediate power response. That combination of torque and a lighter chassis is appealing, but what really excites me is the flexibility of having a motor at each wheel. With the availability of immediate and independent torque at each wheel, there's the potential for lighter, more flexible, more integrated, and more efficient versions of today's traction control, stability control, and all-wheel-drive systems. Each wheel could provide exactly the right amount of power for optimal acceleration and handling; electric motors can react so quickly that the power mix at each wheel could help determine handling trim and eliminate (or, optionally) encourage oversteer.
Not to sound like a misty-eyed enthusiast, but I'm really excited about the capabilities of such a car. I can easily imagine blasting through some twisties in light, compact sports car, electric motors whining, the torque blasting me out of each corner, each wheel generating and constantly adjusting the appropriate level of power to maintain traction and power the car away from the apex. Traditionalists might argue that while this car would be extremely fast and capable, it would be less fun than hustling a nervous 1960s Porsche 911 along the same road; it might be slower, but trying to keep it from flying off the road backwards in each corner might be more engrossing. This might be true, but that hasn't stopped us from enjoying continually more capable cars--and it's just more reason to have a capable new car and a 1960s Porsche 911 in the garage.
And now, after having built up this beautiful vision, it's time to ruin it all with a dose of reality. Left unsaid in my flight of fancy above is the fundamental killer of any electric-car fantasy--the problem of supplying electricity to those electric motors in the first place.
On Wednesday we talked about how a $3 gallon of gasoline, easily available in nearly every neighborhood in the United States, generates enough power to drive a 2,500-pound Honda Fit 40 miles. A tank of 10 gallons of gasoline, which takes about five minutes to pump, can propel that 2,500-pound car 400 miles--or the distance from Los Angeles to San Francisco. No electric car can rival this seemingly commonplace achievement.
Today's most advanced quasi-production electric car, the Tesla Roadster, offers by far the best range we've ever seen from an electric car, at around 250 miles per charge, but that doesn't mean that it can match the Fit for usable range. For one thing, the 250 miles per charge is a theoretical range--some hypermiling devotees have nursed the Tesla more than 300 miles, but the Wall Street Journal didn't see anything close to 250 miles. Instead of a five-minute fill-up, the Tesla needs lots of time to recharge--several hours for a custom, 240-volt, 70-amp line, which is not exactly a common outlet. Charging on a normal 120-volt plug would take a day and a half. Oh, and one other small issue--the Tesla, thanks partially to the highly sophisticated lithium-ion batteries (like you'd find in a laptop), costs an eye-watering $110,000. The Tesla would cost less with more commonplace batteries, but it would weigh substantially more and its range would plummet.
So, why the disparity between gasoline- and electric-powered vehicles? Well, gasoline is a compact and inexpensive way to buy lots of power, and it's easy to store that gasoline in the car. By comparison--I'm about to get technical here, so try to keep up--batteries suck. Batteries tend to be very heavy, toxic to make and dispose of, and they don't hold nearly enough power to push a normal car as far as a tank of gasoline. You can ameliorate--not eliminate--some of those symptoms by using highly sophisticated batteries like the Tesla does, but the trade-off is a high degree of expense. Just look at the Toyota Prius' battery pack--it's a small battery that weighs only about 60 pounds, and it isn't asked to serve as the car's primary motive source. Despite the more modest demands, replacing the Prius' battery pack still costs $3,000-$5,000 (the lower figure is to purchase the pack; the higher figure is purchase and installation).
You also have to treat batteries very carefully--you can't deplete them too far or leave them depleted for too long without damaging their ability to hold a charge. They don't like conditions that are too hot or too cold, they lose efficiency over time, and some types of batteries need to fully discharged and recharged from time to time. Also, unlike a car with a quarter-tank of gas, an electric car with 25-percent charge will not perform as well as it does at full power.
None of this should come as a surprise; speaking personally, I have owned radio-controlled cars that go through batteries in bulk; a trunk-stored, battery-powered, emergency jump-starter that is now a useless brick because I didn't religiously keep it charged; an iPhone that exhausts its battery in four hours if I dare to use its full capabilities; and a two-year-old laptop in which the expensive lithium-ion battery eventually couldn't hold more than a 20-minute charge.
Of the three major battery attributes--light weight, high energy storage, and low price--any given modern battery can give you two, maybe one. And while it's tempting to say that the thing standing between me and my fantasy electric car is better battery technology, that's the same barrier that has held back electric cars since the car itself debuted at the beginning of the last century. Reasonable automotive batteries are just not capable today of storing as much energy as is contained in a full gas tank; and one of this has even addressed the fact that electric cars aren't truly emissions-free. The cars themselves don't emit, but the power plants that generate the electricity usually do.
I admit the last seven paragraphs have turned this post into a pretty awful defense of the electric car, but here's the thing--I'm still a believer. My reasons include infrastructure, power generation flexibility, and the possibility of on-board power generation. Let me explain.
First, infrastructure. The other contestants for advanced powertrain supremacy include ethanol, methanol, liquid natural gas, and liquid hydrogen used in something like today's internal-combustion engine. The problem there is that those fuels provide inferior power density at a higher cost than gasoline and are much, much less accessible than gasoline. So, to sum up, you need a larger quantity of a more expensive fluid to do the same work, and it's a lot harder to get.
So besides being less efficient in terms of power generation than gasoline, these alternative fuels would require a lot of work to be realistic options for the typical driver. A world in which cars primarily run on, say, liquid hydrogen, would not only require changes in our cars, it would require changes in how we create, store, transport, and distribute that fuel. That's a big deal, and it takes a lot of money from a lot of different organizations to make happen. It's possible--it happened when we built the gasoline infrastructure in the first place--but changing what already exists can often be harder than building something from scratch. I'm enough of a cynic that I won't believe we can rapidly make that kind of fundamental change until it happens.
From an infrastructure perspective, electricity is a different story--electricity is even more widely available than gasoline. Nearly every house in America has electricity; I have as many power outlets in my garage as there are gas stations in a two-mile radius. Yes, they're regular household plugs, but even the expense and hassle of putting in a 240-volt plug pales in comparison with the time spent trying to figure out when in my commute I can make time to stop at the gas station. From an infrastructure standpoint, it would be incredibly simple and drama-free to just drive home and plug in my car just as I do my cell phone.
The electrical infrastructure isn't totally perfect--there would have to be upgrades before millions of peoplen across the country began plugging their cars into 240-volt outlets--but it's a much different challenge than would be required to move to a hydrogen-powered-car economy. Uprading a system is easier than replacing it. It would also be easier to justify and prioritize--cars would be just another in a long list of products that depend on electricity, and cars would benefit from a better, more stable electrical infrastructure just like your blender or a local machine shop's CNC machine. Cars would not require a special fuel infrastructure like they do today, and the standardization of energy needs would allow even more money, focus, and energy to be devoted to generating and transmitting electricity in a better way.
That leads into my second point--power generation flexibility. In a world in which cars run on electricity, cars would automatically benefit from improvements in power-generation technology. Today's engines are, essentially, mobile power generators--they turn fuel into energy. In the millions of cars on the road, there are just as many millions of power-generation machines, some of which aren't very well-maintained, some of which use incredibly old technology, and many of which generate power less efficiently and with more pollutants than they should.
Doesn't this seem really inefficient? Setting aside the economies of scale possible in generating a given amount of power in one plant instead of in a multitude of cars, as well as the fact that even some of today's mass-produced energy is truly emissions-free (I'm thinking primarily of hydroelectric power), today's model doesn't allow us to react very quickly to innovation. What happens as we keep getting better at generating power? Let's say automakers discovered a great way to generate power efficiently and
cleanly from hydrogen tomorrow; we wouldn't realize the full benefit of
that improvement until every car on the road had a highly efficient and
clean hydrogen engine. We would get small incremental gains as people replaced their gasoline cars with the fantastic new hydrogen cars, but getting the full gain would take a long, long time. Every subsequent such discovery would require the same slow and inefficient changeover.
The beauty of the electric car is that it doesn't care how the electricity was generated. If we discover nuclear fusion, if we decide we're comfortable with widespread nuclear fission, if we get really good at making power from wind or solar, if we learn how to harness the fantastic energies available in space-based solar, if liquid natural gas or hydrogen emerge as highly efficient sources of power, well, great. If you upgrade the power plant, you've upgraded the electric cars. You don't have to upgrade every engine on every car to get the full benefit--and really, many potentially interesting ways of generating energy (I'm thinking of fusion, geothermal, and space-based solar as examples) don't make any sort of sense at the car scale. Making our cars electric disconnects them from all the change that has to happen as our power-generation technology changes and improves.
All of this still unfortunately leaves us with the bottleneck of today's battery technology. No matter how efficiently power is generated at the power plant, no matter how extensive the distribution infrastructure, it won't matter if the car can't do an adequate job of storing the electricity. But, while I'm not particularly impressed by today's battery technology, I don't think the case is hopless. Given time--probably at least 10 years, probably longer--battery technology just might improve enough to make a fully electric car practical. The Tesla, for example, provides high performance and reasonable range, albeit at the cost of long charging time, limited utility, and an extremely high price. Over time, battery technology might improve and minimize those issues. The Tesla is certainly flawed, but it is a glimpse of that future.
But, until we reach that point, what if we fudged a little by removing electric cars' absolute dependence on their batteries? The Tesla and other fully electric cars need to store all of their energy; once they disconnect from the electric teat, it's a one-way street to a depleted battery. But--and now I'm moving on to my final point, onboard power generation--what if we eliminated the absoluteness of that dependency? What if the car ran solely on electricity, but it minimized its dependency on its batteries with the ability to self-charge with an onboard generator? Such a car would technically be called a hybrid, but these cars are basically the opposite of today's hybrids--rather than supplementing a traditional gasoline-powered drivetrain with an electric boost, these cars would be purely electric-driven, with batteries replenished by a small onboard engine.
The upcoming Chevrolet Volt is the most well-known example of such a car. I know many enthusiasts are tired of the hype surrounding the Volt, but, bad song-and-dance routine aside, I'm genuinely excited by it. The Volt's onboard battery is primarily charged from the electrical grid as the Tesla's is, but once the battery depletes to a certain point, a small onboard gasoline engine starts up to drive the electric motor and charge the battery. Since the Volt isn't completely dependent on its batteries as the Tesla is, it doesn't need as much battery storage, cutting down on battery weight, cost, and charging time (eight hours from a normal household plug). It's not as exciting as the completely pure electric car concept I outlined above--it doesn't eliminate the traditional drivetrain in favor of a motor per wheel, and there's still an engine and fuel tank within the car--but the concept is cool.
The concept gets even cooler once you replace the traditional gas engine in this concept with a turbine. Turbines aren't entirely foreign in the car world; Anthony Cagle has already covered the fondly remembered 1963 Chrysler Turbine, and turbine-powered race cars were so successful at the Indianapolis 500 in the latter part of that decade that they were eventually banned. As Anthony said in the Chrysler Turbine post:
"Turbine engines have several advantages over internal combustion engines: They have far fewer moving parts which reduces maintenance and increases use-life; they can operate on a wide variety of fuels (including, legend has it, tequila); have much less vibration; cold-starts are not an issue; and are much more compact, light-weight, and efficient. Not to mention they produce massive amounts of torque for their size."
These are all highly applicable strengths. The major problem with the turbine in an automotive application was that it was poorly suited to put power to the ground. Internal combustion engines rev quickly and easily; we expect that kind of response when that power is directly tied to the drive wheels. But as a generator to power electric motors and to recharge batteries, a turbine would excel. The turbine wouldn't need to change speeds; it could spin at its most efficient RPM to generate power, allowing the torquey electric motors to actually accelerate the car. Turbines are roughly twice as efficient as internal-combustion engines, can run on many fuels, and they are absolutely excellent at generating electricity--virtually all electricity on the planet is generated by some form of turbine. This would make a Volt-like concept with a turbine a highly intriguing proposition.
I know next to nothing about hydrogen fuel cells, but from what little I understand they could also work in this way. The point, though, is this--for reasons I pointed out above, centralized power generation is innately more efficient than onboard power generation, but at least we have some options to supplement available batteries until batteries are truly ready for prime time.
To be clear, I don't expect any of these forms of the electric car to displace today's gasoline-powered car anytime soon. At the risk of repeating myself yet again, gasoline-powered cars are a mature, well-developed, and thoroughly tested technology, with a century of time, money, effort, and consumer testing in their favor. Fully or partially electric cars have a high bar to clear before they will represent a better overall package than gasoline-powered cars at a reasonable price. It's going to take some significant time and development before that happens.
Still, I'm excited. The whole concept just feels right, and I'm excited that we're finally beginning to experiment and start down the production path--only then will we get this figured out. Besides, I'm looking forward to feeling like a rebel in 2030 when I take my loud, smelly, and hopelessly antiquated 1986 Audi Coupe GT for a spirited drive in a world dominated by silent electric cars.
The first photo of the cutaway electric car is from www.kids.esdb.bg, the second is a commonly available press photo of the GM Skateboard chassis, the third picture is a press photo of the Tesla, the fourth is a charging image from Tesla Motors, the fifth is a battery photo that appears to be all over the blogosphere as a generic battery image, the sixth is a gas station picture from Energy Program.net but copyrighted by TheFunTimesGuide.com, the seventh is a power plant image from McCullagh.org, the eighth is of a solar power installation from Weblo.com, the ninth is a press image of a Chevy Volt, and the last image is a rare picture of the Chrysler Turbine's powerplant, courtesy of ImperialClub.com.
--Chris H.
Chris Hafner on January 22, 2010 at 03:37 PM
Apologies on the lateness of this post - I promised it yesterday, but, well, it took more time than I had. As a result, Anthony Cagle's excellent post on the GM EV1 will follow-up on this topic on Monday morning.
That Car Guy on January 22, 2010 at 04:09 PM
I'd like to see more hydro-electric dams built throughout the world to provide clean, inexpensive power not only to run electric cars, but everything electric in general. Where there's water flowing, surely we can harness its power to produce juice.
The third best thing about hydro-electric power plants is that the technology to built them is ancient by our standards. Wasn't Hoover Dam built in the 1930s?
I live near Nashville, and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) has provided us with clean, affordable power since before I was born. So it can be done. Oh, and the dams make some pretty terrific lakes and recreation areas as well.
CJinSD on January 22, 2010 at 04:18 PM
The same people who ignore the realities of batteries and electricity generation lobby against hydro-electric power plants just as hard as they do against oil drilling. Electric cars were the cars of one hundred and two years ago. Internal combustion cars are the cars of every day since, and probably the cars for the next 102 years.
degenerate1991 on January 22, 2010 at 05:15 PM
Not to burst any bubbles here, but the TVA generates 60% of its electricity from coal fired plants, so it's not so "clean" as they would like you to believe (Not that I have any problem with coal power generation, but let's not serve illusions).
...m... on January 22, 2010 at 07:10 PM
...heavy commercial transportation already made this transition the better part of a century ago in the form of diesel-electric rail and ships...their efficiency and performance are both unmatched and it's only a matter of time before cars, trucks, and the like make a similar leap, now that generator and motor technologies have become compact and efficient enough to use in lightweight applications - in fact, lotus just last year released a small-displacement engine explicitly engineered for highly-efficient automotive generator applications, no mechanical drivetrain considerations whatsoever...
...i think the slower transition will actually be for the marketplace to discard all unnecessary mechanical-design baggage of a century's worth of entrenched automobile dogma, but those first manufacturers which truly embrace the engineering potential of pure generator-electric designs will be wondrous to behold...
Chris Hafner on January 22, 2010 at 11:38 PM
...m...: "...i think the slower transition will actually be for the marketplace to discard all unnecessary mechanical-design baggage of a century's worth of entrenched automobile dogma"
This is a great point, ...m... I thought about working this into the post, but aside from the post already being 8X too long, there just wasn't a good place for it.
I won't deny that there's something about the current automobile that I love--clearly that's so, given my rantings on this site. I'm intoxicated by the trappings of today's gasoline-powered cars--the snick-snick of a well-designed gearshift, the heady smell of oil, grease, and racing fuel, and the fascinating and titillating variety of engine notes. Loping idles, screaming V-12s, whistling turbochargers, smooth inline sixes--I just love them.
But I'm definitely willing to give electric cars a shot, though. I had an Accord Hybrid as a test car, and I thought the extra boost of torque from the electric motor was pretty exciting.
And while I'm hard-wired to associate a revving engine with driving quickly--it's kind of a Pavlovian response--that has baked in after generations of making that association. Had electric cars prevailed in the early 1900s, maybe we'd be hard-wired to react in that Pavlovian way to the whine of the electric motor and the whiff of ozone. Who knows?
Anthony Cagle on January 23, 2010 at 08:41 AM
Well, one problem with applying the diesel-electrics to autos is that the latter start and stop a LOT. Trains and ships go cruising a relatively low speeds for long distances.
I (as you'll see Monday) don't see much future in full-electrics, but the true hybrid that Hafner outlines above -- a small, highly efficient engine doing most of the battery charging -- seems eminently feasible to me. Prediction: hardly anyone will ever plug in their Volt, they'll mostly fill it up with gas and still enjoy tremendous mileage and range (if GM actually designs it well, of course, which I tend to doubt).
I hadn't even considered using a small turbine engine for this, but it seems pretty ideal. OTOH, they rev very high, have tight tolerances, and when they do fail it's pretty catastrophic. So I dunno if the bumps and grinds of daily diving would be a good place for them.
Damn good post though, tons and tons of stuff to think about.
Chazz on January 23, 2010 at 11:27 AM
There is no way that you will get 75% net efficiency from an electric car if it must meet the same range, payload, and safety requirements as a typical modern gasoline or diesel powered car. In fact you would be lucky to even get that efficiency from the coal at the power plant to the outlet in your garage.
Chris Hafner on January 25, 2010 at 08:33 AM
Nobody's really talking about 75% net efficiency on the car; I'm talking about 75% (or more) efficiency on the motor. This is important because it drives how much energy you have to carry in the car. The more efficient the car, the less energy you need to carry per unit of power, which should in theory allow for either more power or less storage, or both.
Once you get into net efficiency including transporting the power to the car, you do indeed start getting into burning efficiencies when generating the electricity, the transmission losses through lines, etc. Of course, for gasoline, you have to think about the efficiency of transporting it as well.
DensityDuck on January 25, 2010 at 12:21 PM
"I'm intoxicated by the trappings of today's gasoline-powered cars, blah blah smells and sounds..."
You know, I remember people saying about how the Kindle lacked that "feel and smell of a real book" and would immediately flop, and yet...
As you say, there's nothing stopping an automobile enthusiast from owning a vintage gas-burner if they want one. It'll be just like horses--it's very uncommon to see horses used for transport or labor, but the recreation/entertainment niche they fill is quite secure.
Jeff on January 25, 2010 at 12:59 PM
dDuck ...
If the Kindles battery ran out in 15 minutes I'm sure it would have flopped ...
given that most of the upcoming electric cars can only go a fraction of the distance their gas counterparts do I'm pretty sure your Kindle vs old smelly books analogy isn't quite as cute as you think ...
KLH on January 25, 2010 at 01:12 PM
If the technology regarding supercapacitors ever takes off (replacing chemical based batteries), we will see a huge push towards electrically powered vehicles and away from gasoline.
Eric on January 25, 2010 at 01:25 PM
The biggest problem with hydroelectric power is that all of the really big generation opportunities are gone - they all have dams on them already.
The next tier of opportunities have mostly already been taken, and the few that remain are quite scenic, and the environmentalists would scream bloody murder.
I've always thought that a co-generation approach could work better than the electrics; the problem is making sure that the net system efficiency is better than existing cars. This is not trivial engineering, and a lot of handwaving isn't going to solve actual problems.
Steve H on January 25, 2010 at 01:32 PM
One problem with motors at the wheels: unsprung weight.
Electric cars make good second cars. They're not perfect for everything, but for many daily chores around town, they'd do just fine.
An electric car would be perfect in my everyday situation. I live very close to work, meaning that I'm starting my gasoline-engine car cold and never really getting it warmed up. I'm driving it at the point where it gets the most wear & tear, the worst mileage, and the highest emissions. I'd love an affordable electric runabout that would get me to work and back and maybe into town for an errand or two.
Tedd on January 25, 2010 at 01:37 PM
Regarding dams, it's important to remember that flowing water isn't really enough. You need a significant elevation change over a fairly short distance, in a location where you can afford the flooding, within some reasonable distance of customers. If there were lots of such locations left, believe me, they'd have dams on them. In fact, they already do!
As for pure electric cars, the game-changing technology will be autonomous vehicles. Once that technology matures, traffic will fairly quickly become all-autonomous in the areas where most of us live, collisions will effectively disappear, and very, very light electric cars will become the norm.
Ryan on January 25, 2010 at 01:40 PM
The turbine idea is nice but there are several problems with gas turbines. Using the turbine to recharge the batteries is a good idea in that takes care of the rev problem. However one of the turbines weak points is that it's efficiency is dependent on temperature. How about a small steam engine? It seems to me that only reason gas engine dominated the car industry is that steam engines take a long time to start. With the engine (the thing that makes energy thermodynamically) and motor (the thing that makes the care go) decoupled most of the disadvantages of the steam engine go away.
George W on January 25, 2010 at 02:08 PM
AFAIK Thorium fusion represents a real breakthrough for cheap, safe and clean power for autos (no weapons grade isotopes though). And, remember Rosen Motors in the 90's adapted a small Capstone turbine in conjunction with a physical storage device (gimbled gyroscope) 4 wheel electric motors, etc. as a power train. It ran well on test vehicles but lost out to the promise of cheap hydrogen fuel cells. I'd like to see that concept revisited. You can still Google some of the press on Rosen Motors.
pettyfog on January 25, 2010 at 02:10 PM
Sorry but NO...
Needs considerably MORE than SOME infrastructure upgrades!
Google 'power companies worried about plug-in hybrids', you'll find some hints even though most dont want to talk about it.
With certain areas of the country already subject to rolling brownouts in peak time and no clear resolution due to 'environmental policy' then how do you get that grid power to 'Pleasantville'? And once it's there, the EV will drastically change the dynamic of the peak.
The utilities are worried that this shift to '24 hour demand' in as few as one out of ten households may fry the neighborhood transformers if they arent replaced first.
It's been evident for some time that the answer is not in 'renewables', wind & solar just are too intrusive. And large scale Geo-thermal is freakin dead in the womb. Look it up.
The answer both for increased power demand and peak smoothing is the 'septic tank' nuke. Think Nuke sub sized.
Installed where municipal plants are now shut down or used to be, these should be able to throw a few MW more on line as required and without overly affecting the environment.
in addition they lessen the effect of massive grid failure, either accidental or intentional.
To those who would retort, NNIMN.. I say.. tough!
Chris Hafner on January 25, 2010 at 02:10 PM
Of course, in my post I forgot one key game-changing piece of technology - the Turbo Encabulator (sometimes known as the Retro Encabulator).
Worth checking out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLDgQg6bq7o
Arthur on January 25, 2010 at 02:29 PM
Interesting read, but why does every discussion about electric cars have to devolve into a discussion about the power grid?
The problem to be solved here is battery technology. We don't need to end world hunger, and promote global peace before we're allowed to have a scientific discussion on how to engineer practical, rechargeable electric vehicle.
Are we all so brainwashed into "thinking green" that we have to qualify any discussion with an apology about how we might have to buy a few more kilowatts from our local power company to recharge these cars?
Migration to electric vehicles wouldn't happen overnight. It would likely be gradual. Can't we just assume that the different methods of power generation we now use would also be increased gradually to meet that need?
Let's leave the question of stationary power generation for different group of eggheads, and focus on the original intent of the article.
Bill Dyszel on January 25, 2010 at 03:10 PM
Hydrogen distribution could be just as easy as gasoline (it's not nearly as toxic). Every home with access to electricity could create its own hydrogen through the electrolysis of water. You wouldn't necessarily need to rely on liquid hydrogen - compressed hydrogen would probably suffice for personal needs. As for commercial distribution, gasoline is currently delivered by truck; hydrogen could be delivered that way, too, and stored in compressed bottles just as propane is now.
Thanks, BTW, for your reference to the Turbo Encabulator. I just sold mine on e-bay after many years of faithful service.
Chris Hafner on January 25, 2010 at 03:14 PM
The problem with electrolysis, as I understand it, is that it's very energy-inefficient. A friend of mine once asked why we couldn't just load a gas tank full of water, run onboard electrolysis, and use the resulting oxygen to power the car. My understanding is that the electrolysis takes so much power that it would be much easier to just use the power to run the car.
I could be very easily wrong about that. But at-the-home electrolysis of water is an interesting idea.
Mikey NTH on January 25, 2010 at 04:05 PM
The problem, as noted, is refueling. A gasoline or diesel powered car can be refueled very quickly. The refueling issue has to be dealt with. Imagine an electric refueling station on the highway - it cannot store electricity the way gasoline or diesel can be stored - so how much grid do you have to have in place to deal with this? How many high tension lines to small towns and highway stations to handle the July 4th traffic? Fuel tanker trucks from refineries can go to these places to handle such a rush; and when the rush is over the tanker can go elsewhere. But high tension electric towers can't pick up and move, and they are far more expensive than a fuel tanker truck.
Mikey NTH on January 25, 2010 at 04:10 PM
With regard to dams and hydro power, theere must be sufficient water in the resevoir to power the dam. If there is a water shortfall, the power drops.
The city of Tacoma had such a problem in late 1929, and the Navy sent USS Lexington (an electric drive carrier) to tie up to Tacoma's piers and run her engines' electricty into the city grid.
http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&File_Id=5113
Chris Hafner on January 25, 2010 at 04:14 PM
Mikey NTH: "The city of Tacoma had such a problem in late 1929, and the Navy sent USS Lexington (an electric drive carrier) to tie up to Tacoma's piers and run her engines' electricty into the city grid."
Wow - that's fascinating, and I had *no* idea that happened. As a WWII buff and a Pacific Northwesterner I'm sadly remiss in not being aware of this particularly interesting bit of history.