Re: Electric cars, cheap

I don't know how that would play out. The Tesla motor puts out almost

300 hp. and weighs less than 70 lb. (and it doesn't need cooling, to boot). If it even comes close to scaling, four 50-hp motors, for example, would weigh on the order of a half-shaft, CV joints, and some part of the hub (a motor, I assume, incorporates the hub, so part of its weight is just a replacement for the weight of a conventional hub). But the driveline losses with a single motor are quite low. I'd have to see some numbers (and understand them) to guess which makes more sense.

There are too many unknowns here for me to deal with. Most of all, I want to know how Tesla gets away with a very lightweight induction motor that has such an extraordinary rpm and torque range that it doesn't need a transmission. No rare-earth magnets involved.

And I want to know if they use that motor for regenerative braking. My understanding is that it's very tricky to use an induction motor as a generator, but I've never looked into it besides a few comments I've seen.

'Too deep into power electronics for me.

If your point is that batteries aren't very good, I already knew that. Everybody knows that.

Hybrid cars and the cool folks of Portland - it's a great combo!

If you're saying that the infrastructure for EVs are not in place, I already knew that. Everybody knows that.

I recently brought an 03 Ford Escape. I was expecting that it had the usual Detroit iron under the hood but it's an all-alloy, V6 DHOC, 24 valve, motor with roller cam followers. The 3.0 Duratec engine is amazing stuff for a grocery getter.

It might be that we ditch electrochemical batteries and just use super-duper ultra capacitors. Maybe we'll use a combination of batteries and caps. My guess is that it'll be some amazing technology in 20 years or so.

I suspect that the public will have EVs pushed on them the same way that FWD was. The advantage for the manufacturers is that they will be cheaper and faster to build and more profitable. Some folks will have to be dragged kicking and screaming but that's the way it always is with new technology.

You might have something there. My dad likes Chrysler (!) cars. I'm not sure what's up with that. I've tried to get him interested in a Hyundai or Toyota but he's not biting. He says that the import cars are nice but he's not fooling me for a minute. He drives a Dodge Journey (!).

Yes, I'm amazed at the engines in ordinary sedans today, both the technology and the horsepower.

I've been following ultra capacitors and it looks like they've hit a wall. The extra surface area, and thus extra capacity, that was hoped for with graphene turns out to be kind of modest, so far.

Maybe someone will come up with another hot idea.

Stay tuned.

Good luck finding anything useful.

I've worked on electronics for Segway, GM and the Army and Air Force and all are equally compartmented, need-to-know secretive. Only the FAA was open about their projects.

I tested Segway motors, batteries and controller boards separately but have only a rough general idea of how they work together. The specifics are all hidden in the software. jsw

All I've been able to find is that the Tesla does indeed use the induction motor for regenerative braking. Now my question is how efficient that is, and how it stacks up against the permanent-magnet motor in the Leaf.

That is enough Googling with dial-up for one day. jsw

Aha! This is what I was talking about:

"OK, what is so great about it? There is nothing complicated about the conversion, no weird rewiring, no complicated math...nothing! There are no brushes to wear out.

"They can not be overloaded; if too much of a load is applied to the generator, it simply quits generating. Removing the load will usually cause the generator to start again. Speeding up the motor will help if it doesn't start right away.

[Great. ] "Yes, but... are there problems? Well, there is no active voltage regulation, but keeping it within a tested load rating can keep it within any voltage parameters that you set. I feel that a voltage range between 105 and 126 volts is perfectly reasonable.

"A motor converted to an induction generator will not start another squirrel cage motor unless that motor is about 1/10 of the horsepower of the induction generator. In other words, a 1 horsepower motor used as an induction generator will start a 1/10 horsepower or less, squirrel cage motor. It is best to NOT use an induction generator to drive motors. The added inductance of the motor will cancel out the capacitive reactance of the capacitors and cause the generator to quit producing electricity.

"The generator will not start under a load. Not a problem!"

Those are the kinds of comments I was referring to. Loading is tricky. Comments about "if it doesn't start right away."

And so on. There are a lot of things going on there that I'd have to study to feel comfortable with them.

Now, that one answers some questions.

Thanks very much, Jim. I appreciate your Googling. If I was into it more and had the time to really dig, I could do it, but I do appreciate your leads.

Oh, jeez. Dial-up? Ouch. We haven't had that vintage here since 1999.

I'm saying that no matter how you slice it, driving a car down the road is going to generate an environmental impact. And much of that environmental impact is going to be in the form of burning fossil fuels. And I don't think that when all is said and done you're really going to burn all that much less fossil fuels to do the job when the intermediary is a battery than when the intermediary is a gasoline refinery and a tank truck.

I think the left deceives itself just as much with delusions of alternative energy as the right deceives itself with hysterical claims that we don't have energy problems.

If there's an electrical car out there that can manage better than 80% efficiency from the battery to the wheels, I want to hear about it. Even if there were, that 330kWh of electrical energy is not delivered to you with 100% efficiency from the ultimate source -- any power plant suffers from inefficiencies, and the ones that run off of nuclear or fossil fuel are basically heat engines and suffer from exactly the Carnot losses that you criticize gasoline engines for having.

Profligately burning fossil fuels to charge batteries that propel cars, and profligately burning fossil fuels to propel cars directly, are still both profligately burning fossil fuels.

I want a windmill on my roof.

Here's my bet: That in twenty years, at least 30% of our cars will be CNG, with spark-ignition IC engines. 10% will be all-electric. 30% will be hybrids of various kinds. And the rest will be some kind of compression-ignition, either diesel or HCCI burning liquid fuels.

The latter will be more popular in thinly-populated areas. The electrics will be mostly in metro areas. CNG and hybrids will be distributed in different areas, based on fuel availability.

I don't expect to be here in 20 years to pay or collect, so take your best shot.

I have read this too. What makes sense to me is to use capacitors for short term storage during regenerative braking and for power boosts. We'll see.

My guess is that the thermal-dynamic efficiency will be a lot better with electric cars than IC systems. What cars do best is turning fuel into a lot of heat and moving it into the atmosphere.

When NiMH was the rage for experimenting, some very expensive home-brew EVs used ultra capacitors to buffer the load for brief acceleration. NiMH doesn't like being discharged at a rate greater than about 1C or 2C.

One car in particular, a converted Honda CRX in which the builder had over $100,000 invested, had a huge bank of them and produced an immense amount of power for acceleration.

Yes, but as Tim says, it's a wash, at best, with present methods of electrical generation.

The reason you don't see that -- or much of anything else -- is simple: The testicles of GM are banging you in the eyes.

And DumbFuck over here is talking about comparing apples-to-apples, eh? How bout the avg cost in the small-car niche, where people are trying to save gas/money, eh? $13K for Versa, $16K Fit, $14K Yaris, $19K Prius c, $16K Corolla, $19K Matrix.... just for starters.

What, you averaged in Veyrons and McLarens?? dumbfuck.

And you KNOW this..... how????

Not for people tryna save money. True, you could do worse than a Volt.... Hummers come to mind. But as usual, you miss the point. And you STILL don't understand the Prius c.... under $20K, with, if you believe the prius forums, over 60 mpg.

Your Volt, on a good day, ice only, with a helium foot, won't crack 40 mpg... Which actually is not bad, for 3800 lbs....

The Angstmobile is merely a figment of your imagination. It's no different that Gunner's 264mph motorcycle ride or some other quack's apocalypse prediction.

But you CAN'T do it. Some people can do conversions, but you aren't one of them and they prove little anyway. _I_ can and have completed much more complicated projects than EV conversions, but I admit that I can't build a Volt.

The ass banging is also a figment of your imagination. The fact is that a $30k Volt is a lot of car for the money.

Ditto for lots of other new models, all aimed at what buyers say they want. NOTHING is ever going to be aimed at you, who says he'd be happy with a VW beetle class EV that he says he could build easily, but keeps babbling rather than buying or building.

Because YOU can't understand it!! Just like you don't understand how your own effingVolt works. Just like you can't understand RELATIVE and RELEVANT average prices for automobiles, and quote the figure that suits your lying disengenuous purposes.

I'm sure..... like your Gummer chroniclings/witchhunt??? LOL

but I admit that I

I never said I could build a Volt. Another of your disengenuous strawmen.

So is the Honder Fit.... $16K.... the darling of CR. Uhhh, your ROI over a Fit???

I mentioned I have two cars already -- actually 2.5.???