Going electric

[John Brennan]

And the power grid is soooo ready for that-- NOT.

All you electric car guys: ready to build a $#!+load of nukes? That's the only way it's going to work.

OR...

We could go with what we already know works extremely well, is very efficient, very clean, for which all of the infrastructure is already in place and working like a charm, and of which we have abundant supplies of for the foreseeable future-- and which would allow for a thriving economy by which we might continue to invest in the R&D necessary for some sort of true, viable, energy breakthrough-- PETROLEUM.

Hmm... or let's just sit on our (jack)asses and think about it for a few more years, We'll be a nice, poor, docile, eviscerated, easily-controllable, and castrated nation by then.

[AMXSC]

Do remember that charging a lion battery is about 80% efficient.

Lets talk real numbers. With higher voltage (120-300Vdc) charging systems, charging a Li-ion battery is really 94%-97% efficient and can obtain 99% under near perfect conditions. Here is why. Modern 3 stage chargers use a microprocessor to monitor voltage and current going into the battery. This uses about 2-4% of the available power to charge the battery. Internally the battery has a small about of resistance and this takes a little less then 2%.

Here is the the reason why there are no internal or minimal loses during the charging. When you charge a Li-ion battery it adds a electron to Li (lithium) creating Li+. When 2 positive Li+ are next to each other they are forcing to separate creating a positive charge on the positive terminal and a positive charge inside the battery. The negative terminal reacts to the positive charge and dumps it's reaction material (usually carbon) at the now free Li+ charged particle creating a negative charge on the negative terminal. The reactions do not waste energy and/or produce waste heat until at near full charge when lithium begins to combines with the base metal (overcharge condition). The discharge of the battery happens because voltages flows between the positive and negative terminal and internally it allows the Li+ to lose it charge while the negative terminal recombines with it's reaction material also losing it's negative charge. This also does not waste energy like the chemical reaction in lead acid batteries.

Now lets talk about other batteries. Charging Lead acid battery is about 80% efficient (really 50%-92%). When you charge a lead acid battery you have a higher resistance in the plates and in addition to the reaction of the acid inside the battery creates heat and you also have a reaction with the water in the acid releasing hydrogen and oxygen before it reacts with the acid. This is also why a lead acid battery lose water and becomes worse when overcharged because the acid and lead creates lead sulfates at a slower rate then the reaction of the recombining of hydrogen. Also the lead sulfates in the plates adds even more resistance and slowly kills the battery (preventing charge/discharge) ending the life of the battery.

What about absorbed glass mat (AGM) battery and Gel cell batteries. (also 50%-92% efficent) These were designed to prevent the release of hydrogen and oxygen during the charge/discharge cycle adding to the battery life and have the advantage of being no maintenance.

Power generation/transmission probably equally so.

Yep, and you have the same problems with fossil fuels. Where do you think gasoline comes from? At least with electric I can put up a few solar panels and get my electric every day that the sun shines on them.

Then discharging the battery is about 80% efficient.

Discharging Li-Ion is about 97%-99% efficient and Lead Acid is about 80% with a range of 50%-92%.

Then you MUST make sure you take care of your battery, unlike an internal combustion engine, because it will turn into a huge brick if you let it sit discharged for more than a couple weeks.

Really..... You never have needed to change oil in your internal combustion engine. Modern electric car's use a BMS. (battery management system) The BMS prevent overcharging, undercharging, high/low voltage disconnects and monitors the battery temps. The reason the battery temps are monitored is that lithium can burn (just like gasoline) and the cooler the batteries the more power can be pumped into and out of them. Also, people that own and/or built their own electric car would use it every day and would charge it every day. The chance of an electric car sitting discharged for a couple weeks is somewhere near 0%.

Finally, if one uses half the available power to a standard 200A/240V feed, it will still take 3 hours to charge a tesla roadster's battery, assuming 100% efficiency. It's not an insane amount of power, but it's nothing to sneeze at either - a standard driver of the masses would likely at least double his monthly power consumption owning one.

Is this bad???? The standard home charger for a Tesla Roadster is a OEM version of the TS70 by ClipperCreek it is rated peak at 70A@240Vac and it takes just under 4 hours to fully charge on a completely discharged battery pack. What I find interesting is that this electric convert would also spend exactly $0 dollars on gasoline. So if this electric convert puts up a few solar panels to offset his or her electric bill. Not only would it be cheaper to drive but he will save the environment also.

According to the U.S. EPA, the Roadster can travel 244 miles (393 km) on a single charge of its lithium-ion battery pack, and can accelerate from 0 to 60 mph (0 to 97 km/h) in 3.7 or 3.9 seconds depending on the model. The Roadster's efficiency, as of September 2008, was reported as 120 mpg (2.0 L/100 km). It uses 135 Wh/km (21.7 kW·h/100 mi, 13.5 kW·h/100 km or 490 kJ/km) battery-to-wheel, and has an efficiency of 88% on average.

And the power grid is soooo ready for that-- NOT.

All you electric car guys: ready to build a $#!+load of nukes? That's the only way it's going to work.

OR...

We could go with what we already know works extremely well, is very efficient, very clean, for which all of the infrastructure is already in place and working like a charm, and of which we have abundant supplies of for the foreseeable future-- and which would allow for a thriving economy by which we might continue to invest in the R&D necessary for some sort of true, viable, energy breakthrough-- PETROLEUM.

Hmm... or let's just sit on our (jack)asses and think about it for a few more years, We'll be a nice, poor, docile, eviscerated, easily-controllable, and castrated nation by then.

The same can be stated against petroleum. Remember the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? Did anyone ask what that did to the shrimp industry also in the the Gulf of Mexico?

What about OPEC? I'm sorry to say that the United States is an importer of oil. Our fuel prices are tied into the world oil prices so when OPEC cuts the supply our fuel prices increase. Also when our demand increases over the supply again our fuel prices increase. The worst thing is when the value of the US dollar decreases compared to the rest of the world. We must spend more of our dollars for the same amount of oil. All of these things have happened.

Have you ever asked why is the United States in a recession and why we have inflated prices on commodities such as oil, food and steel or why is unemployment is so high? It is because our economy is based on the unstable price of petroleum.

Every hear of frog theory economics?

Put a frog in boiling water and it will jump out.
Put the same frog in cold water and add heat to it slowly it will just sit there and let you cook him.

The same thing happens with petroleum.

If they jack up the prices quickly everyone would be looking for alternates.
If they raise up the prices slowly we will all just keep buying it until we have no money left.

I'm not against petroleum or renewable fuels. I'm against modern slavery by allowing myself and my country to be at the whim of fuel prices or we can (as you very well put it) become

a nice, poor, docile, eviscerated, easily-controllable, and castrated nation

Remember 2006 President Bush we are Addicted to Oil speech.

Did you know that California Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation requiring California's utilities to get 33 percent of their electricity from renewable energy sources by the end of 2020. Leading the nation in developing renewable energy resources. What if the entire United States set that goal. Our economic future would improve and our environment.

The problem is that we (Americans) are all consumers of oil. Making us the source of the problem but we put a blind eye to fixing it. Each of us needs to ask what can I do? For some it's electric cars for others it might be changing a few light bulbs from incandescent to compact fluorescent light bulbs.


For those who have read this...... sorry for the long post. I just want people to know what the facts are and for people to make there own informed choices.

[KhanTyranitar]

Ok, so who here has taken a look at the cost an environment impact of lithium ion batteries? I mean from mining, to refining, the manufacturing, operation, storage, transportation, and recycling. If you look at the real numbers, you will find that lithium ion batteries have an enormous environmental impact. Even the ones we use in our cell phones are becoming a major problem. Furthermore, I think your charging efficiencies are optimistic to put it lightly. I use lithium ion batteries with computer controlled balance chargers, and even with that technology, the remittances are quite high, and the amount of heat even a small battery produces tells you a little something about the charging efficiency. The high heat being output is wasted energy, and its a lot of heat. Many electric cars have designed their batteries to be able to expel the heat from charging and discharging.

I think green technology is an interesting idea, and the idea that you can get power from the sun for free is always intriguing and I think is a worthy pursuit. But here is an interesting fact. Producing the high grade silicon needed to make solar cells requires a lot of electricity. This electricity for the time being has to come from sources other than solar, because solar just doesn't produce a lot of power, certainly nowhere near the order of magnitude need to refine the raw materials needed to make solar cells. Wind power also has many of the same problems that solar does, it can fluctuate a lot. Wind power is basically a form of solar, and it can work well. However, it you think its free energy think again. Wind power requires a lot of moving parts. Those moving parts need to be lubricated. The stress these parts put on that lubricant is severe, so severe that existing synthetic oils could not meet the challenge, and new types of synthetic oils had to be developed. Wind mills go through a lot of oil. They also had to be built in the first place. When there is little or no wind, they are useless, and they can only provide baseline power, they can not easily adapt to handle peak needs.

As I'm illustrating, and I'm not really disagreeing with you, but green energy really is that that efficient. It takes huge input of resources and energy, and it will eventually pay back the investment, but it takes on the order of 15-25 years till you reach the point where your initial investment starts to yield a return. In many things, large scale reduces the cost. This is true of wind power, the large mills are very efficient,and by building lots of them, the cost of making them decreases somewhat. This is not true of solar, large volume manufacturing requires enormous energy input and investment, and the bigger the project, the more the existing infrastructure struggles to meet the demand.

At the end of the day though, electric cars still have the same problems they had back when they were first developed. They rely on batteries, and stop and think about this for a second. What items in your life run on batteries, and how many of those devices give you problems that are directly related to the performance of those batteries? Have the advancements in technology really solved the problems? In my experience, pretty much all my battery powered devices have a limited battery life, as they age that life decreases, and they are still dependent on proper maintenance and charging which ultimately requires power that comes from somewhere. True the batteries of today last longer, last longer per charge, and are somewhat more reliable. But at the end of the day, the inherent problems of the need to be charged, the long charge times, and the impact of the manufacture, storage, and recycling of batteries is still there.

I think the hydrogen system, while inherent with problems is a better solution because even though it has its own issues, it allows for rapid refueling, and does not require the use of toxic chemicals. At the end of the day, it still has to be produced by some means, and hydrogen, like batteries, is not a fuel source, it is really just a form of energy storage. But the problem with electric cars isn't the electric part, its the batteries. If you can build electric cars that do not depend on batteries, then you really have a great system, and the overall efficiency is still higher. Hydrogen makes more sense front his standpoint because even though it is a low density fuel, it does allow you to make a battery-free electric car.

[AMXSC]

KhanTyranitar, I liked your post. It was well wrote and stated very accurately concerns over the environment impact, payback costs/timelines and the number one problem with electric cars being the batteries. I agree with every thing you stated except the hydrogen fuel being a better solution even though we can do hydrogen cars right now. I don't know, I guess I'm really just on the fence over hydrogen. I could go either way, If hydrogen was produced from renewable energy great, but if it comes from the stratification of natural gas I'm worried.

--> More Info http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THGarJkZJgk

Also, I really hate talking about environment impacts of this or that in a comparison of what is better. I'm not a tree hugging environmentalist so I'm not going to talk about the environment impacts of mining and processing of Lithium or the environmental impact of oil well drilling, the burning of dinosaur juice or burning of coal. Please, don't get me started on what I think about nuclear energy. I did however want to talk about this statement.

Furthermore, I think your charging efficiencies are optimistic to put it lightly. I use lithium ion batteries with computer controlled balance chargers, and even with that technology, the remittances are quite high, and the amount of heat even a small battery produces tells you a little something about the charging efficiency. The high heat being output is wasted energy, and its a lot of heat. Many electric cars have designed their batteries to be able to expel the heat from charging and discharging.

Yes, the charging efficiencies stated are somewhat optimistic if you apply that to Lithium Polymer (LiPo) batteries. I know that you have experience with LiPo batteries, because LiPo batteries need balancing chargers to charge properly. These batteries are less efficient then current lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4). The reason that LiPo batteries heat up is they are current limited and while charging these batteries dump the excess energy off as heat. Higher capacity LiFePO4 batteries do not produce heat like LiPo batteries and for this reason they are more efficient. Large capacity LiFePO4 batteries is the current battery of choice for electric cars but the problem is the higher cost compared to LiPo batteries or even Lead Acid batteries and this has caused many electric cars to be designed to use lower efficient batteries. But, things are changing because the next big thing in batteries is the Lithium Sulfur batteries because of 4 time increase in capacity per kg over LiFePO4 batteries. This will cause a drop in prices on LiFePO4 batteries making electric car batteries even more cost effective.

My point is that batteries are improving and we have come a long way from lead acid and earliest Lithium Cobalt and Lithium Carbon batteries, and even with 80%-90% charge/discharge efficiencies of LiPo batteries this can still be a viable alternate.

[DPDISXR4Ti]

A better idea would be the BMW N47D20 Turbo Diesel.

Bumping this old thread as I was just reading about the N47 engine today. I hadn't even realized that it was made available in the US for a short time, labeled the N47T/N47TU and powering the F30 328d (model years 2014–2018) and the F25 X3 xDrive28d (model years 2014–2017). Earlier versions of the engine were known for timing-chain failures, but from 2013 onward the design was greatly updated, so anything found on US soil should be the improved engine. The manual 6-speed Getrag was not offered in the US, only the ZF 8-speed Automatic.

The BMW N47 engine bellhousing bolt pattern is shared across several modern BMW modular architecture families, commonly grouped with the N57, B47, B48, B57, B58, and S58 longitudinal transmission configurations.