In theory, it may be more efficient to generate electricity and move it to the car battery. The gasoline engine is not very good at extracting all the power out of a gallon of fuel, so if a better converter is available, it may help. I say "in theory" because I have no idea of the efficiency of a coal plant. Nuclear may be better, as is hydro. Perhaps some slick new turbine is better at extracting power.
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steel engines have a thermodynamic limit of 37%. Even when aided with turbochargers and stock efficiency aids, most engines retain an average efficiency of about 18%-20%.[10][11] Rocket engine efficiencies are better still, up to 70%, because they combust at very high temperatures and pressures and are able to have very high expansion ratios.[12]
Electric motors generate a lot of heat, especially at low revs and high torque. Are you proposing forced ventilation, self ventilation or water cooling?
It sells because most people think electricity comes from a little stream in Wisconsin.
Electricity is primarily from coal. Regarding dams, we've been ripping those out for years. The contribution from hydroelectric power is lower than in the
Cooling without active fans or pumps. The Model T used passive water cooling. Harley-Davidson Panheads use passive air cooling.
The heat issues with the electric car are more due to resistive losses in the battery than losses in the motor. Active liquid cooling of the batteries has been suggested. In a lot of cases, though, just having thermal mass to smooth out the occasional large peak current demands causing brief peak heat loads turns out to be sufficient.
This raises an interesting question, if the battery is getting hot through current draw, then it has greater internal resistance than is good for it, causing a voltage drop across the motor terminals, which will of course mean lower torque and top speed.
Life is just like that. Nothing has zero resistance, and we're talking an awful lot of watts here. Battery technology improves but there is always some resistive loss.
I guess that atomic power will come back and then it will be electricity for the vehicles. They decided to stop atomic in many countries some decades ago but it is coming back now that oil is disappearing.
Whatever it will be after oil it will not be used directly in cars so the electrical path for cars is a sure thing whatever will be used to generate it.
You would not put coal in cars but using coal to create electricity is ok and new technology is possible to make coal power plants better and they need not pollute.
This is the point behind the lead/acid battery, the internal resistance is so low that you can still get 300 amps to the starter terminals at 12 volts.
About the only way they're going to move those overpriced turkeys (and Government Motors is still losing money on every one!) is
0bama forcing them down peoples' throats, and forcing them into corporate fleets is probably seen as a good place to start.
They've only had 281 voluntary Volt takers in Februrary, most likely all braindead environmentalist types. Nissan Leaf sales were even more dismal at 87 sold.
The six-cylinder engine in my 1975 Hornet is a marvel of simplicity and durability. In the 36 years since it was manufactured it has required no internal repairs, just service of peripheral systems which are inexpensive and simple to deal with. The 3-speed Chrysler Torqueflite transmission is still smooth and responsive and has likewise never required internal repairs.
The driveline is about as bulletproof as one could want, much more reliable and inexpensive to service overall than an array of batteries would have been over the same period of time.
To fully replace gas and diesel engines with electric motors you need BATTERIES (or some more exotic electricity source) that will allow the car to drive for hundreds of miles with lights, air conditioner, and other accessories running - on the freeway where there is virtually no stopping to take advantage of regenerative braking. You need to be able to haul trailers and heavy work loads while maintaining range. The batteries will need to be fully rechargeable within a few minutes. (People are not going to put up with waiting hours for battery chargers, especially when refueling on a trip.) You're going to need to provide some means to recharge them wherever they are, including parking lots of apartment and condo complexes. And the batteries should either be inexpensive to replace or last the life of the vehicle. (Which from my standpoint needs to be at least 20-30 years if not more.)
Until you have batteries that can do all this (and we are a long ways from that), your vision of an all-electric vehicle future is nothing more than a 1970s pipe dream of what the year 2000 will be like.
It is much more likely that people in the near future will still be using internal combustion engines. Fifty, a hundred, or a thousand years from now? Possibly by then there will be a breakthrough that will permit a truly usable, general-purpose electric vehicle. Or perhaps not. Don't know and don't care, I won't be around to worry about it; but it is a no-brainer that internal combustion will still be around at least as long as I am.
Trains are driving on electricity and there are plans to allow vehicles on the road get electricity from lines above the road similar to what trains do today.
Then you do not need very much of batteries in the vehicle itself.
It is not a question of what you want or would like to do it is more a question of what you can do when there is no more oil.
300 amps at 12V is not even five horsepower. You want real peak current, a NiCd will do a whole lot better than a lead/acid cell because of much lower internal resistance... and a lithium stack better than that.
But you don't get 100% efficiency no matter what, and even with 99% efficiency you're still going to be dumping considerable heat just because of the number of kilowatts involved.
Lying gets you nowhere any more. Ain't it a shame? This says it's 12,000 Volts over 5 years, and 13,000 "other" electric.
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What's even more stupid is to be surprised that a company called General ELECTRIC says it is committed to buying electrically propelled cars. Even more stupid yet is to believe anything a CEO says. Duh. Ciao!
All it needs is a bit of imaginative thinking. Trains get their juice from either a static rail or overhead cable. What's wrong in putting strips over hundreds of miles of motorway and allow cars to pick up juice on the move, batteries then only for towns and parking?
We all just as well give up arguing, Roger won't ever "get it". Not everybody who wants a Prius is a "tree hugging eco-weenie" which BTW note how the ICE lovers are always strong burly manly men and anyone else is a weenie.
I want a Prius not for any global environmental impact, real or imagined I want it partly for the local impact but mostly for the power possibilities ala the Pri-UPS project (use the car as a near silent 5kw backup generator). I couldn't care less about AGW but what I do care about is sitting behind cars like Roger's at a red light and having to put up with his un-catalytic converter-ed exhaust. Call me selfish but it is my lungs after all (I don't smoke either).
Other than that people who go "a certain compact or subcompact from 1988 got the same MPG as a Prius" don't get it either. The Prius is a midsize built primarily for low emissions, not for MPG. The fact that it gets better MPG than a smaller vehicle, such as the Echo/Yaris (which uses the same engine) is just a bonus. That it gets better MPG than a smaller Diesel car is amazing considering the no throttle loss and more energy (and cost) per gallon of Diesel. For instance it (NHW20 US model) has a wideband front O2 sensor, a Thermos bottle (Dewar flask) that stores hot coolant to help it warm up faster, a flexible/inflatable "bladder" in the fuel tank and a filler neck seal that stops the escape of vapors that make you smell like gas, and when first started cold it drives on battery power and runs the ICE with extremely retarded ignition timing to send more heat out the exhaust manifold and help "light off" the catalytic converter faster.
Other than that I don't want the ZVW30 Prius (2010,2011-...) because IMO they FUBARed it with the interior dash/console suspended arch, they removed the Thermos bottle if favor of an exhaust heat recovery device, removed the fuel bladder, changed the hydraulic braking system, and bumped the engine from a 1.5 to a 1.8.
Until I can get an NHW20 I will just keep driving my 2nd gen Lumina 3100 with the MIL on for an EGR insufficient flow code until summer when I can pull the intake and clean the passages and replace the gaskets.
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