Electrical cars

The problem of the electrical cars' range can be solved if we install terminals of recharging everywhere, including on the aeries of freeways. Since the complete recharging takes several hours, it is possible to reduce it by equipping every battery of an independent male electrical plugs, and every demarcation of recharging of so much female plugs. So the time of recharging of n batteries will take so much time as the recharging of one of them.

Reply to
Jean
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Our freeways in UK tend not to have aeries, so I'm afraid your plan won't work.

Steve

Reply to
shazzbat

And electric cars are hardly the answer to the worlds pollution problems - possibly due to the fact that a) they still require fossil fuels to be consumed in power stations to charge them (admittedly more efficiently than in a car engine) b) Creating batteries good enough to use takes an aweful lot of energy and increadibly toxic materials that we are in short supply of already, and the process of making them pollutes with some really unpleasant chemicals. c) Batteries have a relatively limited lifespan, certainly a lot more limited than an engine.

Dont get me wrong, i like electric cars and they have their place, but they are simply not suitable for practical normal use and I doubt they will be for a long long time.

Reply to
CoyoteBoy

Weird really when you consider that electric cars were around in the late

1800's, you would think they would have got battery tech. really sorted in a hundred years, perhaps the oil companies keep that suppressed?

There is no reason not to charge your electric car from a wind turbine or wave generator, neither of which use fossil fuel, and I'll bet there is a way of getting electric power from geo thermal sources too.

Reply to
Mrcheerful

Li-Ion batteries have very decent energy storage (100's of times that of PbA) per weight / volume. The problem currently (no pun intended) is getting the energy out of them quick enough to be useful for cars.

Or nuclear power :)

To answer points in OP:

a) Yes b) No. When the Li-Ion discharge rate problem is solved they'll be perfect, and making them doesn't pollute. c) Yes but given the above, so what?

Li-Ion gives triple figure range btw.

I don't want to get drawn out into a long debate about this but what I think should be the current way of doing things is having most cars using PbA and then later Li-Ion (PbA is very recycleable and Li-Ion is long life and may well be recycleable too, dunno) and either having a pusher engine that can be attached somehow or a towable generator for adhoc long trips. For the daily commute do it on electric alone.

If you commute over too long a distance for pure electric then use an ICE and get taxed to high heaven for it or move house :)

Not going to happen but by definition there's nothing wrong with idealism :)

Peter.

Reply to
Peter Spikings

I dunno; there's hardly a week goes by without some magical improvment being announced in battery technology etc that will make the electric vehicle truly practical. Decent range performance and price. Yet we're still waiting. And although plenty have driven the much hyped Tesla I've yet to see a full test where the actual range is given.

It's the same with lead acid technology. If each improvement much hyped had been true they'd be very different today from 100 years ago in terms of size, performance and life. But they're not.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

I know, put a wind turbine on the top and recharge as you go along ;)

You could try solar cells all over, but you run into the cost of production again.

Reply to
Brian

I prefer the dodgems method.

Reply to
Mark W

I agree with all that, plus there is the weight of batteries which have to be carried around; that in itself drains power.

People could stop driving around in big heavy 4x4 where not needed, a sign that they couldn't care less about environmental issues.

Hybrid cars are getting very advanced now, with energy recovery from regenerative braking. A recent TV programme showed that Toyota prius was the most economical, the test included a Smart car and a small electrical car. Toyota prius also use an Atkinson cycle engine rather than the normal Otto cycle engine.

Reply to
johannes

The 4x4 issue is just jealouy , what would you want the owners to do , own two cars

Reply to
steve robinson

Quite a lot of 4x4s are more environmentally friendly than the so-called "Ecocars" once you take into account the pollution caused by manufacturing new cars. Decent 4x4s tend to last a lot longer than the Ecocars, lots of

4x4s run on LPG, and a large percentage of 4x4s are properly maintained because they tend to be owned by people who like cars and therefore are more active in keeping their cars healthy.

Eco cars tend to be owned by people with little interest in cars. Most of the Toyota Pious owners I've met are clueless about cars but like to be on their high horse about how environmentally friendly they are whilst driving around in a ton and a half of battery powered s**te.

Reply to
Pete M

can last longer than

some

and a few

Reply to
Duncan Wood

It's certainly not jealousy on my part. Come'on, the big 4x4 are flashy cars with bodywork and bumpers not suitable for the rough and tumble; the odd tree branch scraping along the bodywork, the odd tree stump hitting the flimsy plastic bumper? E.g. Merc ML, Porsche Cayenne.

Reply to
johannes

not all off road terrian contans tree stumps and branches , yes they are nice cars some may call them flash others call them extremly safe cars for the driver and passenger . Not everyone lives within the inner cites where roads are gritted in the winter and generally mud free

Reply to
steve robinson

You would be surprised how many 'ordinary' cars can cope well with such driving conditions, especially if winter tyres are fitted.

Reply to
johannes

Its rare in the uk for cars to be fitted with winter tyres

Reply to
steve robinson

The only *proper* test I've seen of a Prius was in Autocar, and apart from in heavy stop start town driving its fuel consumption wasn't brilliant. On an average touring route driven at normal speeds it was beaten by a BMW

330d - a very much faster car. And the overall for the test - which included performance testing for acceleration and top speed was 22 mpg. So although it may be frugal in heavy town traffic it's not when used as most use a car. And it's too big and expensive for a town only car in the UK. Basically, a con designed for the rich in the US.
Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

My friend has just replaced his two and a half year old prius with another prius, over the 13000 miles he has had it the total fuel consumption average has been 57mpg, only one person and daily commute along the lanes to work. He drives it quite aggressively (I think) so it is a fair representation of what the average driver might get. the new prius has better suspension, that was the only real reason for a change.

Mrcheerful

Reply to
Mrcheerful

That's a bit shit, really - 'cos you'd get similar from a Golf / Octavia

1.9TDI. Probably more, if you picked up one of the new VW 'Bluemotion' range.
Reply to
SteveH

It depends where you use it, it'd be worse for me in a Prius, the one that lives in our London branch uses way less fuel than the Golf TDi it replaced.

Reply to
Duncan Wood

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