Petition to bring the Electric Car back to the Retail Market.

Electric conversion is about 90% efficient. Gas engines are way less. All other things being equal, a full electric should be more efficient when you compare the energy IN to the distance covered.

It's silly to bring that kind of stuff into this. Of course a CRAPPY electric will be worse then a world class Hybrid.

I suppose there is a certain logic to that but I suspect that many of those rural people are getting their electric from power plants FAR removed from their little slice of heaven. Should someone ship the pollution over to them?

That's certainly true for electric input to an electric motor compared to mechanical power out. But batteries throw a big SNAFU in the mix.

Battery CHARGING efficiency is relatively poor, meaning that a pretty big chunk of the power that comes out of the wall plug is never going to get to the wheels of the car. I don't remember the latest efficiencies for different battery technologies, but charging efficiency is not all that far off from the peak efficiency of a good internal-combustion engine, particularly a constant speed turbo-diesel. You can easily prove this- feel your laptop battery or your cell phone battery after it's been charging for a while- they get hot because not all the input power gets stored, a lot is lost to heat.

IMO, and I could be wrong but I don't think I am, the overall most efficient vehicle package would be a hybrid electric vehicle with a small constant-speed (or two-speed ala Toyota Hybrid Synergy Drive) common-rail injected turbo diesel. And this still neglects manufacturing energy- when you factor THAT in, a direct-to-wheels (ie conventional!) small diesel or gas engine probably wins when you look at the total raw material-to-the-crusher energy budget of a vehicle.

That depnds on what your definition of "in" is.....

Charging efficiency depends a lot on the speed of charging. If you are willing to put up with a slow trickle charge for a couple days, you can get nice high efficiencies even with lead-acid cells. If you want to charge quickly, and everyone does, you will have to put up with badly reduced charging efficiency.

Ultracapacitors (which are secretly batteries in disguise) help this situation a bit, but not miraculously.

The thing about gasoline is the energy density is so damn high. With a pure electric vehicle, you lose so much energy just lugging the batteries around wherever you go. It's getting better, though.

--scott

When you strip everything else away, that is indeed the crux. NOTHING is better than hydrocarbons at packing huge amounts of energy into a tiny volume and light weight, and doing so rather safely. In fact, diesel has more energy density than gasoline and you can practially put out a fire with a bucket of #2 diesel (OK, thats an exaggeration, but its not explosive like gasoline.)

You make a lot of good points. If I only had one car the hybrid would make the most sense. If I had a second car it would sure be nice to have a pure electric for the simplicity and to use for daily commutes.

Well, that's the advantage of the whole hydrogen car thing. You take your electricity, use it to produce hydrogen which is easier to store and ligher than comparably-powered batteries, and use that. Of course, hydrogen isn't half as easy to store as gasoline... but it took auto manufacturers a long time to figure out how to store gasoline safely as it is.

--scott

How about the Air Car? May I Quote one of the PM Letters in my Popular Mechanics magazine for August 2007? I Quote: HOT AIR.The Article about the compressed-air car (''Driving on Thin Air,'' June '07) was so amazing and revoluntionary that I can't believe that you didn't feature it on your cover.A car with a range of 125 miles, up to 68 miles per hour, using nothing but air as it's on-board fuel source? If true, the implicatins for gasoline and pollution reduction, not to mention the national security and economic ramifications, are earth-shattering.Don Koplen Boulder,Colorado.

Curry Holden, in Lexington,Texas says,,, I have a general dislike for paying so much at the pump, which is why it makes me so mad no American automaker the Air Car to U.S.markets.

UnQuote.

Here is the way it T'IS,,,, (My cuhulin's Quote) U.S.fed gove is Never going to do anything that benefits America and Americans. cuhulin CATTLE RAID of COOLEY

That's very true, and would be even more so if you had a plug-in station at BOTH ENDS of your commute. That way, the car's battery pack could be even smaller and lighter and less energy would be wasted in hauling around battery instead of payload.

I don't like paying those prices either, but I blame American drivers more than the automakers. As the price of gas has been going up, so has the consumption!

No one is even TRYING to use less gas. No one is slowing down, no one is avoiding heavy braking, or doing any coasting. When I drive a few mph slower, or coast when a light way ahead turns red, all I get is tailgating and nasty looks!

One doesn't need to stop driving (a sour grapes statement). You don't even need to drive fewer miles. Just use less gas when you do drive by driving in economy mode.

When you coast, yours is the only car on the road that coasts at that speed. That means every single person behind you has to work at riding their brakes for as long as you are having fun coasting.

If you're driving a few MPH slower than traffic, and you're in the right lane, then those who are hassling you are bozos. If you're going slower in any but the right lane, you're basically going out of your way to be rude and obnoxious, and in some states you're breaking the law as well.

Kudos to you for trying to conserve. But remember that the traffic lights alone in many places will waste more gasoline than just about anything else.