fspeedster

iTrader: (6)

This "argument" is neither political nor "California is better then the other" so

It'llrun

Long before CA, Michigan and New York, and even Texas were top economies... CA has more port volume because most of what America gets from overseas comes from countries closer to CA than other states. Therefore, CA gets the business. That, however, has nothing to do with the fact that CA is run poorly. I'll post when I want to, thanks. CA may be great and all, but you don't own OR run the internet.

You demanded data. I provided it. End of story.

sintered

Any takers on this? Almost every road you drive down has electric power lines hanging on poles, why not divert some of that power to an in-road system (embedded in the pavement an inch or so for safety) that can power pure electric or range-extended (i.e.- Volt) vehicles?

It be great to hear some specifics on induction systems. Other than some wikipedia articles (which i don't understand the jargon and equations), I can't find automotive-specific info on the web about how this could work.

Some time ago i read that it takes about 40hp to keep a full size truck or SUV rolling down the highway on level ground at 70mph, and ~25-30hp at 55mph. A small car will obviously use far less. Could these power levels be achieved with induction to sustain an electric car at speed?

ThisBlood147

Sooooo......you're saying that you DON'T have any response to offer on all the facts he just presented you? Just..."California!...**** YEA!!"

Wnts2Go10O

iTrader: (12)

california's status is dropping as companies decide to leave.

It'llrun

Sounds good in theory, but it won't work well, if it would work atoll. First, as noted(by you), there's the issue of cost in relation to taxes. They'd SKY-ROCKET too, because we'd have about a billion miles of road to re-top. Next, and more importantly in terms of safety, a bad crash has the potential to wipe out a power grid or at least damage thousands of dollars worth of lines in a road. Some crashes have fuel spills which ignite and they could melt the protective coating on the power lines. Or a vehicle could skid, rolling over, digging into the pavement and exposing the lines(and damaging them). The cost would simply be as enormous as it sounds. This kind of idea can(and has) work in larger cities, but it probably could never do well across our highways.

Were there a way to transfer power from the existing lines into the vehicle without a cord, that would be sweet. Then, all the owners would have to be concerned with is the price per Kwh.

In the end, this is a cost prohibitive idea... Kinda like th electric car itself.

Volt sold 608 units last month while Lead, er... Leaf was purchased by 298 would be energy savers... Combined, they've sold over 2,000 units beginning with December(2007 total), or about the same number of Camaros sold every 1-2 weeks.

sintered

Good points Run.

Just so we're clear: the inductive systems I'm talking about don't need physical contacts between the car and power line. It is a wireless energy transfer. You wouldn't see the wires/cables in the road, they would be an inch or more below the pavement surface and the inductive plate attached to the underbelly of the car would receive electrical power from the magnetic field generated by that power line (all lines carrying electricity have this magnetic field). Quite a few currently available systems are showing upwards of 90% energy transfer efficiency at distances of around 1 foot.

Where I'm stuck at is just how much power could be transferred using the given footprint of the average vehicle. Assuming it takes around 20hp (15kw) to keep a late-model aerodynamic sedan running at 60mph on level ground, could that 15kw be transferred with, say, a 6' x 6' induction plate mounted under the car? Ideally the plate would be thin and couldn't be seen unless you crawled under the car.

If this power transfer is possible, it, IMO, is the only way electric vehicles will ever be truly viable. Just the major state routes and maybe some interstates around large metropolitan areas could be a prime target for such systems since they carry the bulk of commuter miles driven. Then on longer/rural trips the range-extending technology would take over.

It'llrun

I'm with ya on you layout of this idea, but the cost would be trillions and we're just not gonna see it in any working fashion for at least decades.

Darksol

Were I buying a fridge, toaster or wash machine, I would consult Consumer Reports. If I am looking into buying a car however they would likely not be who I would look to for guidance. Wasn't CR the ones who swore that a Mitsubishi SUV would suddenly roll over during emergency lane changes and Car and Driver couldn't reproduce it?

While for a long time criticism about American car companies was valid, they have for the most part, turned the ship around. Chrysler is still kinda working out some bugs.

After you figure the impact both financially and environmentally that these batteries have, charging, building, disposing...how are they really a viable alternative yet?

And hydrogen powered cars? The ones that only produce water vapor as a emission? Water vapor is the MOST COMMON greenhouse gas. It is more abundant than any other greenhouse gas...think about that for a moment. How is moving to a fuel that will produce MORE of something that is already in large abundance going to help?

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html

http://www.slate.com/id/2182564/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0131145840.htm

As more water vapor gets pumped into the atmosphere the atmosphere will thicken. Trapping more heat. Now, lets think about the geography of America. If California were to adopt a hydrogen car platform en masse how would all that extra water vapor be handled by the jet stream? What would the effects be for the dry states immediately to the east? Would they become drier? And Colorado become wetter as the hot air pushes higher into the mountains? Leading to possible floods in the middle of the country and sever drought in the states just east of California?

I have no idea if that would be the outcome but how can anyone dismiss the possibility?

sintered

I'm not one to believe there will be any kind of "run-away" greenhouse effect on this planet. Be it carbon dioxide, methane, water vapor, whatever. People are way underestimating the earth's buffering capacity for elemental balance. Constituents of any mixed gas exert a partial pressure in the gas, there comes a point where the reactive forces in the gas can't remain stable and things separate or precipitate out. Paleoclimatologists and geologists have been saying for decades that for billions of years after the earth formed our atmosphere was almost exclusively made up of carbon dioxide, methane, and other "greenhouse" gases... no oxygen. Plant life is solely responsible for the amount of oxygen and nitrogen currently in the atmosphere. Currently the atmosphere is less than 1% CO2 (~300-350ppm) and the environmentalists are in an uproar. But the "solution" to the problem, in their view, always involves big government and 12,842 new types of taxes to target specific groups. Which, unfortunately, always grossly negatively effects the most financially vulnerable groups (the poor, etc) because you can't tax energy without increasing the cost of everything including food, consumer goods, travel expenses, etc. Energy taxes are the most regressive out there. I don't want to kick off a political discussion but this is the cold, hard truth. The cost factor always applies. However, for political and sustainabilities sakes, we do need to diversify our energy portfolio, primarily with domestic sources (like with electric cars, biofuels will never be a primary source due to production limits).

Moving on: hydrogen, like electricity, is strictly an energy carrier, not a primary energy source like fossil fuels or nuclear material (uranium, thorium, etc). It's simply because hydrogen isn't found in it's virgin form... it's always bound to something like oxygen (water), sulphur (hydrogen sulfide), etc etc which takes a lot of energy to break it free.

We currently have 104 nuclear reactors in the US. If that number were to grow a substantial amount then I'd agree the Hydrogen economy could become at least a good portion of our transportation energy needs (nuclear reactors routinely generate the temperatures needed to separate water into it's constituents... as you saw with the hydrogen explosions in the recent Japanese reactor events).

In the end, we need a balanced energy usage using fossil fuels, biofuels, and electrical power. Done right, we'd never have to worry about our transportation sector, and thus economy, being put into jeopardy by some outside influences.

It'llrun

That was quite well said...