Free energy?

@Cyracuz,

Actually, I presented the story as an example of the unbelievable. Not sure of the claimed mpg, but it has circulated over a number of decades. I imagine the energy in a gallon of gas has been fairly well tracked down in terms of vehicle motion, heat loss, rolling resistance, etc.

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@roger,

Yes, Roger was being sarcastic....

It looks like about 1936

http://www.snopes.com/autos/business/carburetor.asp

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@roger,

I wrote this in the last post but it went....bzzttztazz...

A few years ago me and a friend of mine were talking about this sort of thing, and he mentioned that his FIL had bought a brand new 72 Dodge {in 1972} that was rated at 16 mpg....and he had recently bought another Dodge...07 or 08...and it was still rated at 16 mpg. My friends way of looking at it was that it was proof of some sort of conspiracy....my way of looking at it is....for every advancement there is a cost...air bags, side impact protection....air conditioning.

But what it all comes down to is exactly what Roger said....there is only so much energy in a gallon of fuel vs what you are trying to move with it. There is about 1,000 lbs difference between a 64 {2,570 pounds} Mustang and a 2005 {avg 3,500 pounds} model. All the aerodynamics and fuel injectors in the world are not going to overide half a ton of dead weight.

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@2PacksAday,

2PacksAday wrote:

For anyone interested in this subject, Stan Ovshinsky, is a name worth looking up....he had some interesting things to say in the film "Who Killed the Electric Car" about some of his battery patents, that were of great interest to the auto makers.
Do I believe there are miracle 400 mpg carburetor designs locked away in one of the big 3's, or the energy giants vaults.....no.
Do I believe they supress inovation daily.....yes.

How funny. The movie "Who Killed the Electric Car" has to be one of the dumbest movies ever made.

1 Reply

@okie,

Why?

1 Reply

@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

Why?

Common sense. If there was a good electric car for the money, it could not be killed. Sheesh, look at all the electric cars now, but hardly any buyers. Even Obama Motors has been ballyhooing their electric car for how long now? But when are we going to see anything out of them in the way of actually selling a significant number of them? Read the following:
http://republicmainstreet.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/chevy-volt-a-bust-billions-of-taxpayers-dollars-wasted/
"Chevy Volt A Bust – Billions Of Taxpayers’ Dollars Wasted
Obama, on live television, drove the Volt and bragged about GM’s (Government Motors) prowess in developing the electric car of the future. Unfortunately it isn’t totally electric, does not get anywhere near the mileage he stated, seats only 4, costs $41,000, as much as a BMW, and $7,500 of your taxes will go to each Volt buyer. Gee, I think I’ll run right out and buy one.

I’m wondering, was Obama misinformed or did he just “lie” to validate his pet union bailout project"

1 Reply

@okie,

Quote:

If there was a good electric car for the money, it could not be killed.

Are you so sure?
I think you underestimate those who have power over the markets and their ability to influence people's opinions.
And I also think you underestimate the human tendency to go by habit and resist what is new and unfamiliar.

Even a gas powered car becomes unpractical if there are no gas stations spaced out at reasonable intervals along the road.
It doen't help to introduce an electric car and expect it to become a popular choice without also making available the recharging stations and other installations that were required for it to be practical.

For instance, in some cities, busses run on electricity. They are connected to a powergrid by means of a pole that comes up from the roof of the buss, connecting to power cables above the street. So the batteries of the busses are continously being recharged, so they can drive around all day without having to stop and refuel.

A similar solution for electric cars could perhaps be possible. By extending this principle so that enough roads and streets gave the oportunity to charge while driving, you could get practically infinite milage in terms of the need to replenish energy.

But with such a system there would be no way to measure the individual consumption of power from the grid, and thus no way to put a price on in for the individual. So the current system discourages such ideas.

Also, we wouldn't need only the car that could run in this way, but also the redesign of the entire network of roads. More than any one president can promise. That huge change would require a fundamental change in the mindset of pretty much everyone before it could be seriously considered.

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@Cyracuz,

Question, do you have an electric car? If you really want one, there are plenty of them out there.

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@okie,

No, I have one that runs on gas. There are no electric cars that can be used for what I need a car for. I often have to bring with me quite alot of sound equipment, and I often drive pretty far.

If the infrastructure to make electric cars practical existed I would get one.

1 Reply

@Cyracuz,

One idea is replacing the empty batterys on a station instead of recharging them to prevent any loss of time...they on turn would use fast chargers to fill them up for the next costumers in a matter of minutes...this is already being sugested by several companys and sounds promising. Of course one would need an universal design for batteries to make it pratical.

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@Cyracuz,

I hope you realize you just answered your own question as to who or what killed the electric car, at least for now, as they simply are not practical for most people.

I have a neighbor that actually has an electric car. I have talked to him, but he basically only drives it as sort of a novelty, on very local short trips to the grocery store or something like that. It looks sort of like a large golf cart, and it would not be practical for going even 10 miles or driving on more than a slow city street with speed limit of 25 or 30. He would get run over on the highway trying to keep up with cars doing 65.

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@okie,

You can have eletric cars doing fast speeds now...and the charging problem can be solved easely as I just sugested above, no need for toyota pryus drama really...

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Have you figured out how you are going to generate all of that electricity yet? And how much will it cost and how much energy will it take to build all of the batteries, plus what kind of disposal will you do to avoid environmental damage. After all, you are talking a monstrous number of batteries.

1 Reply

@okie,

Yes the number of batteries would be a problem and there is a long way to do still...but long cycle rechargeable batteries (5000 charges) would be a far lesser one then the actual we have with fuel you must convey...as for electricity production it will be done anyway with nuclear power with or without electric cars...

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By the way, who said that every individual should have their own car anyway?
Who said that this is the only right way for us to live our lives?
The fact is that this notion was entirely based upon capitalistic oportunity to make money off everyone having a car. Because what else did Henry Ford do, aside from inventing the car? He gave people free time to use it. He gave them time to spend more of their earned money because he wanted it back somehow.
His success made it less interesting to explore alternative means of propulsion, since back in those days oil wasn't scarce, and we didn't know about the damaging effects on the environment.

Another thing is that pretty much everyone can produce electricity if they want to.

Imagine a car with all the means of producing electricity built in to it.
It could have a set of fans on the roof, which could be turned into the wind, thereby generating electricity even when the car didn't run.
Solar panels could be fitted on the cars, charging batteries from sunligh.
You could turn off propulsion whenever you were going down hill, going from spending energy by propulsion to generating it, using the wheels both for propulsion and as turbines.

When driving far, several cars could hook up to eachother, allowing some cars to rest and charge their batteies while being pulled along by the others, and then they just swap when they are fully recharged..

You see, there are countless possible approaches. I just took these our of the air. Modern technology could accomplish all of these things. But it is simply not going to happen in a world where everything has to be made to break down relatively soon, in order to sustain the need for economic growth. Where consumption is a neccesity for our continued success. Something that is expensive to produce, and then requires very little consumption afterwards is considered by business men to be a very dumb thing to do, as you are satisfying coustomers so well that they are unlikely to return for more business in a while.

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@Thomas,

Quote:

Although wind, sun, waves, and geothermal heat are free, the technology to make electrical power from them is not.

The technology to make gasoline, diesel and all the other products from raw oil wasn't free to make either. Nor is getting the oil out of the ground.
There is an enormous infrastructure built around this industry, and this is what allows us to use fossil fules practically.
If we spend that money and effort in building infrastructure for harnessing free electricity, it may well be that these alternatives to fossil fuel are cheaper in the long run.

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In my opinion, "hybrids" are just a transitional vehicle which may help us overcome the economics of purely electric production vehicles.

Functional vehicles can already be produced (see below). The main challenge is how to "fuel" them (charge them up). At present a lot of our electrical power is produced from fossil fuels, so all we do with electric cars is move the gas tank from one place to another. But that doesn't mean that large scale electrical production can't be done with wind and wave and sun and geo, it only means we have to bridge the economic hurdle that keeps those energy sources from being cheaper than oil/coal.

Whenever new technologies are developed, they always start out being economically inefficient. Typically, only people who can afford the extra cost indulge in them (same with consumer electronics). But as production ramps up, efficiencies are gained and eventually the costs drop below competing costs, at which point the new technology takes hold and supplants the older tech (flat screen TV's being the obvious recent example). Eventually "free" energy will be cost effective due to the growth of infrastructure and reduction of production costs, and once that happens, oil (as a primary energy source) will be dead, but until then we either need to wait for the slow transition to take hold, or we need to divert funds from some other resource to alter the basic cost equation (which will accelerate the transition).

Quote:

Tesla Roadster Specifications
Motor
Type: 3-phase, 4-pole electric motor
Max net power: 248 hp (185 kW)
Max rpm: 13,500
Efficiency: 90% average, 80% at peak power

Battery System
Type: lithium ion.
Cells: Size 18650, 3.6V, 2.2Ah (nominal).
Arrangement: 6831 cells, size 18650, in 11 sheets. Each sheet contains 69 parallel strings and provides 32.4V (nominal). Each string contains 9 cells in series. 10 of the sheets provide traction power, the 11th layer provides accessory power.[17]
Weight: about 990 lb (450 kg)
Full-charge time: 3½ hours
Estimated life: 100,000+ mi[9]
Capacity: about 56 kWh[18]

Performance
Acceleration time, 0-60 mph (0-100 km/h): approximately 4 s
Top speed: 130 mph (210 km/h)
Range: 200+ miles (322+ km) on the EPA highway cycle

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Quote:

NEW YORK (AP) -- The first mass-market electric cars go on sale next month, and the nation's electric utilities couldn't be more thrilled -- or worried.

Plugged into a socket, an electric car can draw as much power as a small house. The surge in demand could knock out power to a home, or even a neighborhood. That has utilities in parts of California, Texas and North Carolina scrambling to upgrade transformers and other equipment in neighborhoods where the Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Volt are expected to be in high demand.

Not since air conditioning spread across the country in the 1950s and 1960s has the power industry faced such a growth opportunity. Last year, Americans spent $325 billion on gasoline, and utilities would love even a small piece of that market.

The main obstacles to wide-scale use of electric cars are high cost and limited range, at least until a network of charging stations is built. But utility executives fret that difficulties keeping the lights on for the first crop of buyers--and their neighbors--could slow the growth of this new niche.

"You never get a second chance to make a first impression," says Mike Rowand, who is in charge of electric vehicle planning at Duke Energy.

Auto executives say it's inevitable that utilities will experience some difficulties early on. "We are all going to be a lot smarter two years from now," says Mark Perry, director of product planning for Nissan North America.

Electric cars run on big batteries that are charged by plugging into a standard wall socket or a more powerful charging station. A combined 30,000 Nissan Leafs and Chevrolet Volts are expected to be sold over the next year. Over the next two years, Ford, Toyota and every other major automaker also plan to offer electric cars.

1 Reply

@dyslexia,

Interesting info. in your post, dys. I wonder too how many fires this is going to cause, via power surges and the like?

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@okie,

I wasn't aware that power surges caused fires, Okie.

I think one solution to the "extra" demand is to prohibit charging of these vehicles during peak consumption times. At all other times, aren't electrical generating facilities operating at below peak efficiency?

Dedicated vehicle charging circuits could be controlled to run on timers that couldn't be tampered with. If they can run on one 120V/20 Amp circuit, they can't pull all that much juice, certainly not a whole house load.

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