The Electric Car Revolution is on

[VelesHomais]

If we don't start switching now, it won't happen in 20 years either, or even in 40 years. It's vital to start now. Anyway, what's the point of even discussing this, all major car manufacturers have begun making the switch, there's no stopping now.

[mic of Orion]

Originally Posted by VelesHomais

Whatever you think of electric cars doesn't matter, the fact of the matter is that 2010 marks the year of the beginning of the Electric Car Revolution. Every major and minor car manufacturing company is releasing an electric car this and next year, with a hundred more models becoming a reality in just two years. Charging stations are popping up in every country and their numbers will rise exponentially. Battery capacity is expected to rise by 1000% thanks to nanotech breakthroughs.

Let us monitor and discuss this inevitable and overall positive revolution.

Some existing problems to overcome:
* Average range of a single charge is at 110 miles or 177 km.
* A single charge from your regular home outlet will take as much as 6 to 9 hours. Although a new boosted charging stations does the job in 30 minutes. These numbers are expected to drop substantially in the coming years.
* In the next few years electric cars will only be convenient for those that have their own garage or a large parking lot equipped with electric charges. The latter is unlikely now but will change in just a few years, France is planning to enact a law that starting 2012 all residential complex parking lots are to be equipped with electric charging stations.
* Electric cars don't solve environmental problems just yet, because much of electricity is generated by coal power plants. However, this is easily remedied by building more Nuclear and Solar power plants. Fusion power reactors will soon be tested, in the future easily providing most of our energy needs.

To kick start the thread here's Aptera, the weird electric car that offers the least resistance to air. About 5000 of these have been pre-ordered in the United States :




NOTE: Most electric cars look like regular cars, not futuristic space ships.

Post anything related to electric cars here. Hopefully I'm not the only one excited

brilliant thread pan.

on a side note, did you become a liberal in past few years ?

I always got you bit conservative side, at least from days of EE.

[mic of Orion]

Croatian made electric car, production started with corporate and private orders mounting to some 1500 vehicles in first 6 months. Manufacturer is looking for investors, lack of money prevents full blown serial production and major exports.

[VelesHomais]

Originally Posted by mic of Orion

brilliant thread pan.

on a side note, did you become a liberal in past few years ?

I always got you bit conservative side, at least from days of EE.

I am not into the liberal/conservative labeling, as far as the environment goes I'm as green as Irish plains.

[mopc]

Originally Posted by I-275westcoastfl

Not exactly.. we will be quite dependent on fossil fuels for at least another 20 years minimum a massive switch like this will not happen overnight. Until then we should focus on the best alternatives we can like hybrids and diesel.

Im all for hybrids, and I agree that we will be dependent on oil for 20 years or likely much more, but the technology to make the change already exists.

[VelesHomais]

I don't know if I should create a solar energy thread, doubt that it will be sustainable, so here's a little offtopic diversion

Sunseeker II, fully solar energy powered manned American airplane


It's not commercially viable today, instead it's a glimpse into the future, when battery and solar panels efficiency is much better.

The aircraft industry is waiting for the same breakthroughs that the car manufacturers are. Basically, better batteries. For the past decade it was primarily laptops that were pushing for the battery advancements, now auto manufacturers are joining in.

[VelesHomais]

Battery swap demonstration by Better Place

[回回]

An original Aptera in San Francisco
image hosted on flickr

[VelesHomais]

Toyota Prius with an aftermarket solar panel kit that could extend the car’s range in electric mode by 20 miles
Solar panels mounted on cars can supplement battery life. Although I doubt that this is cost effective as of now, unfortunately.

[VelesHomais]

My concern about Aptera is that its wheels seem to be extended too far, making it more difficult to park. Although I haven't seen a single Aptera on the roads yet.

[mopc]

Apteras are hard to spot only a few prototypes are running, they said they would be selling by 2010 but now it's 2011.... it's a pretty awesome-looking car to enrich and modernize our streets filled with blocky 20th century homo-erectus-mobiles.

[VelesHomais]

LOL, that last sentence is right on target.

Aptera in New York. Theoretically I may spot one sometime.

[BOSS]

down with the electric car! ...

Petrol FTW!!

[BOSS]

nothing can beat this.

[VelesHomais]

Electric cars are going to be a lot faster than petrol ones, in years to come

[mopc]

Actually the Tesla Roadster is already one of the most muscly cars out there today, doesn't it have the fastest acceleration in the market today or something.

Electric motors get 100% torque at 0 second. No oily transmission, gears, millions of clumsy Victorian-age gasping gaskets and jumping pinions and pistons, electric cars are easy to maintain and more macho to accelerate.

Fuck the environment I just want to drive a car running on something that wasn't around in Jules Verne's times!

[BOSS]

there is no soul to an electric car could careless about speed.

[AltinD]

Originally Posted by nomarandlee

... a good milestone on the hybrid car front.

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

i just posted that, but ya, it is a pretty big milestone in integrating hybrids.....

What milestone? A 4 cylinder engine + Electric motor costing the same as a V6 engine car of the same model?

LOL at the logic ... plus a VW Touareg Hybrid (V6 + El.motor) already costs less then the V8 model.

Originally Posted by mopc

This doesn't make sense; the amount of energy spent to extract and process oil and far greater than that of producing electricity, you just have to diverge the energy used in oil wells and refineries to producing electricity and there will be energy to spare.

So what you are saying is that the amount of electricity used to exctract oil is bigger then the amount of electricity that burning that oil will produce?

Originally Posted by VelesHomais

Some people are intimidated by the future

No, we just frown at your naive conviction that in 2 years we will be driving electric cars in mas.

[mopc]

Tesla Roadster test drive

[mopc]

Originally Posted by AltinD

So what you are saying is that the amount of electricity used to exctract oil is bigger then the amount of electricity that burning that oil will produce?

No, I'm saying that if we were all driving electric vehicles right now, even though electrical consumption would sharply rise, energy consumption would drop quite a lot overall.

Even if all that extra electricity were produced by diesel or kerosene powered powerplants, the fact that is electricity and distributed by electric wires to electric motors means that at least 70-80% of the energy-content of every ton of diesel or kerosene actually is used by the final driver.

Whereas the internal compbustion engine only uses max 30% of the energy content of the gasoline it uses (minus all the diesel to transport the fuel from the refinery to the gas station).

So even if all electric cars used electricity from fossil fuel plants, there would still be less energy use overall than what we have with internal combustion neanderthal mobiles puffing smoke and trembling like a medieval machine.