problems with the electric car?

Ali want

What is the problem with the electric cars and why aren't they on the roads today?
I nead at least 5 reasons why i wouldn't buy an electric car!!!

Answer
The only reason why there aren't electric cars everywhere is because ppl are ignorant.

But if you must know, what causes people to not buy electric cars is:
1. "Short" range (very simple solution to this, just get a generator on a trailer for whenever you go long distances).
2. Nowhere to recharge. This is still not a big problem, because almost everybody who will use an electric car will recharge it at home 99% of the time, and on long trips will take a generator with them.
3. Supposedly weak. Not true, but a lot of people believe electric cars are not powerful. That is wrong. A car is as powerful as you make it. If you want a 100hp car for everyday stuff, you can have one. If you want a 1000hp semi, you can have that too.
4. Expensive? Yes it is true, to get a reasonable electric car right now you need to say goodbye to a lot of cash, but that is only if you are buying the car. You can very easily take an old car from a junkyard and convert it, and it isn't going to make you file for bankrupcy.
5. You need a garage/carport to have an electric car. True if you want to have an electric car, and recharge it at home at the same time, you would need a garage/carport/driveway, but you can probably do some deal with your power company to run a power cord to a smal plug where you can plug in your car. They would be glad to do it for you. After all, you are paying them for a lot of electricity every time you recharge (all modes of transportation require as much energy as a small apartment (at least) and electric cars are more efficient than other modes of transportation).

I only see number 5 as a potential problem if you can not get permission from the city hall or something, but there is another way to deal with that: you can see if your manager will agree to install a cable for charging your car in the garage of the building. You will be paying them for parking there, so they should be happy to comply as long as you pay or do the job yourself.

Number 4 is a potential problem if you can not recognize general parts (like the engine, fuel tank etc.).

The benefits of electric vehicles are much stronger than the drawbacks.

And for all the ignorant people out there:
1. No country uses 100% coal
2. Big coal power plants are more efficient than small gasoline engines.
3. Electric cars recharge at night, when coal power plants are kept at idle, so electric cars mostly use energy that would otherwise be wasted.
4. Electric cars are more efficient than hybrids. Considering the average fuel consumption of cars is much higher than hybrids... yeah.
5. Electric cars can use peak power for a much longer time than internal combustion engines. That means that starting an electric car with a heavy load is not a problem.
6. Hydrogen technology is a whole load of rubbish. It's basically electric cars, but MUCH less efficient. Plus it's much more dangerous.
7. Electric cars have a range that is good enough for every person that doesn't go on a cross country journey every day.
8. Electricity for electric cars can come from hydro (59% of Canada's electricity is hydro, and 1% is renewables as of 2003 (?) ), solar, biomass, wind, tidal, wave, geothermal, etc.
9. A lot of US's electricity comes from natural gas power plants, which are still polluting, but much less than coal. 20% of electricity in the US is from natural gas, as of 2008.
10. Electricity can be produced from lots of differend sources, which means it is much harder for a country to be dependent on some unstable country for energy. The US has lot's of coal, natural gas, nuclear, and that means that if people switch to electric cars, US's dependence on foreign oil will lessen.


11. IMPORTANT!!! Even though your electricity bill will rise because of owning an electric car, your gasoline bill will dissapear, therefore you spend the same ammount of money, if not less.

Phoenix Electric Car: capable of 10 minute recharge?

dreamflow

Is this true?
http://www.autoneato.com/phoenix-electric-car-the-electric-truck-with-muscle/

Answer
As the article points out, the ZAP-X Crossover has also claimed that it will be able to recharge in 10 minutes:

http://zapworld.com/ZAPWorld.aspx?id=4560

They do it with nanotech batteries, which you can read a little bit about here:

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/070802/clth056.html?.v=99

From the Phoenix car website:

Off board charger: 10 minutes to recharge to 95% capacity
On board charger: 6 hours to recharge from 220V plug-in

So basically in order to get the power necessary to recharge such a large battery in 10 minutes, you would need to have a special recharge station built. Otherwise you can just plug into a 220V outlet and recharge in 6 hours. If we can get some of these rapid recharge stations built to make the Phoenix and ZAP-X recharge times just 10 minutes, electric cars would soar in popularity very fast. This is a huge technological breakthrough.

Powered by Yahoo! Answers

How large of a panel or panels would I need to charge an electric car battery?

10 best electric cars image

Rob G

I would like to have a designated solar panel electric system to charge an electric car. Can it be designed as a Portable system to take with me if and when I move to a new house? Or can one be designed as a portable system to take in the car and used to charge the car when needed?

Answer
First we need to examine the required parameters. "An electric car battery" is not a standard item. The Volt and I-Miev batteries are 16KW-hr. The Leaf battery is 24KW-hr and the Tesla Roadster battery holds 53KW-hr of energy. The larger the capacity the longer it will take to charge all else being equal.

The second issue is time. Even from the grid you can charge your electric vehicle with a Type I charger at low voltage and amperage or a Type II charger at a higher voltage and amperage. The Type II charger is likely to be 4 times as fast. The same will be true of the size of the solar panel array.

As long as a solar panel will add more to batteries than the losses it will charge the vehicle. So are we considering only standing losses of about 3% per month, daily driving up to the battery range of the vehicle, or do you want to consider the continuously running the vehicle? Lets use the Nissan Leaf as an example:

The leaf battery is 24KW-hr. In a month such a battery would lose about 3% of its charge just sitting around. This amounts to (24 x .03) .72KW-hr / month. On a daily basis this would be (.72 x 12/365) .02KW-hr Solar insolation varies by location and time of year. The daily average in Arizona at the peak time of the year is about 7KW-hr / sq meter / day. Solar panels vary in efficiency but 10% is not an unreasonable number with today's technology. This would give us .7KW-hr of electricity / sq meter for our panels and a maintenance panel would only have to be (.2/.7) .286 sq meter in size. This would probably fit on your dashboard and such items are already sold: http://compare.ebay.com/like/320700323984?var=lv&ltyp=AllFixedPriceItemTypes&var=sbar

If however you anticipated using the full EPA range of the vehicle on a charge (73 miles) you would need 24 KW hr / day. Our best case solar panels would then have to be (24 / .7) about 34.29 sq meters (or 369 sq ft in size) This would approximately be equal to a surface area of 8 feet by 46 feet long. While this is hardly portable there have been some efforts to combine stationary and portable solar panels to drive electric cars: http://puregreencars.com/Green-Culture/Around-the-World-with-Solar-Taxi.html Here also is a portable solar panel trailer: http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/Electrochemistry/doc/trailer_fc.html There are solar cars but these are not passenger vehicles. They are built ultra light and efficient: http://electric-vehicles-cars-bikes.blogspot.com/2009/10/solar-car-uses-less-power-than-toaster.html

Last if you were to try to power your Nissan Leaf continuously like a solar vehicle we might derive that the Leaf would require (24KW-hr/73 miles) about .329 KW-hr/mile. Traveling at 60 mph in one hour the vehicle would need 19.72 KW-hr / hour or about a 20 KW power supply. Commercial solar panels you might put on the roof of your house are rated from about 165 watts to just over 300 watts power output. You would need from about 66 to 121 of these panels to continuously power the vehicle. A genset trailer might be a better option: http://www.evnut.com/rav_longranger.htm

Do you think electric cars with generators should also be careful?

Melissa

Electric cars are great for the environment. However people fail to address its other problem. Million's of electric cars on the highway could produce a tremendous amount of magnetosphere. How do we approach the matter?

Answer
The magnetic fields inside electric motors really do not travel very far. It's likely that you would not be able to detect magnetic fields even with a compass from 10-20 feet away.

Powered by Yahoo! Answers

What is the best electric car conversion kit?

10 best electric cars image

tOPHAt

I have been doing some research on converting my old 1993 Chevy S10 Blazer to an electric car and I'm not too sure on which brand too use. Some of the ones out there seem like complete scams but I don't want to rule anything out. If anyone has experience they could pass on down to me it would be much appreciated. Thank you!

Answer
Electric car conversion kits propose to give you the components and possibly the know how to yank out the engine, fuel system, coolant system, exhaust system and possibly the transmission and replace it with their parts. Often you will keep the transmission and they provide a motor and an adaptor plate. They typically provide the kits, "batteries not included" as this remains one of the biggest expenses.
-- http://labshelf.com/electric-car-conversion.html
-- http://www.electroauto.com/index.html

An alternative to a kit is to have a conversion shop take your vehicle and convert it to an electric. Certain shops may have particular cars they work with and this points out the problem with "kits" in general. No one kit is going to be best for every vehicle conversion. Compromises will always be made.
-- http://www.acpropulsion.com/
-- http://www.genovationcars.com/

Another alternative is to simply get the needed parts from an EV conversion supplier. They may also offer technical advice but there may be some parts you will have to supply on your own from a local machine shop. And some of the parts you may make yourself. The advantage here is that you might pick and choose the parts you want.
-- a premium parts supplier: http://www.metricmind.com/
-- everything you need: http://www.kta-ev.com/
http://cbelectriccar.com/blog/ev-conversion/top-10-electric-car-part-suppliers-on-the-internet/
-- http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthread.php/paul-sabrinas-cheap-diy-144v-motor-controller-6404.html

A last alternative is to purchase used parts in a attempt to make a conversion on the cheap. Here is a good example: http://ecomodder.com/blog/a-672-electric-car/

A bit of wisdom that you might read is that it may not be the best thing to try and convert an old vehicle. When you are done you are going to be left with the body, style, and problems of an old vehicle. The investment can be substantial. A rust-bucket is going to be the same and you should be proud of the results.
--But ... an example of what can be done with lots of money and an old car: http://www.opb.org/programs/ofg/segments/view/1686

Does the electricity use to operate electric cars require fossil fuels?

uneak16280

I have given myself a headache trying to find the answer to Does the electricity use to operate electric cars require fossil fuel. Any help would be appreciated. Please list a website also.

Answer
Yes, in almost all cases. Fossil fuels are used (often quite intensely) to produce solar panels, hydroelectric dams, and wind farms. The current materials and construction methods rely on fossil fuels and are generally harmful to the environment. For example: silicon in solar panels is produced in a fossil fuel intensive way (see source below), hydroelectric dams destroy ecosystems (see source below), and large-scale wind farms (if terrestrial) require large areas of cleared landscape, huge industrially-produced parts, and maintenance that often relies on fossil-fuel based products and services. Also worth mentioning are the massive electrical grids that transfer electricity all over the world. These require incredible amounts of material and maintenance, most of which is produced with fossil fuels (transport vehicles and staff, metal used for wiring, etc.). Furthermore, the production of batteries in 99.9% of cases is dependent on fossil fuels. The many chemistries (zinc, manganese, nickel, lithium, copper, mercury, etc.) used in batteries are produced using vast amounts of fossil fuels, either for mining (i.e., nickel) or processing (i.e., zinc).

Unfortunately, electric cars rely almost entirely on fossil fuels. They simply extend the life (e.g., 10 years with a battery) of fossil fuels by using technologies like batteries. The efficiency is slightly up, but the dependence on a non-renewable, depleting source is still there.

Powered by Yahoo! Answers

What battery to recharge an electric car?

10 best electric cars image

loopy_legi

I want to build a 'store' of generated electricity to recharge an electric car. 10-20 kWh will be needed. What size/type of battery(s) will I need?

Answer
An ordinary 12v car battery has a capacity of the order of 70 to 100 Amp-hours, which is about 0.84 to 1.2 kWh.

So say ten to twenty big car batteries.

But how do you charge them?

Did GM make a critical error when scrapping electric cars over 10 years ago?

Bird N

Electric cars did exist over 10 years ago, but GM decided to scrap all of the cars, even though they worked perfectly. It's all in a documentary called "Who killed the electric car?". GM sold the battery technology to an oil company and the electric car was no more. If they would have worked on the battery technology, think of how far we would have gotten into electric cars.

Answer
yup. their biggest problem is they don't strive for innovation. it seems like no big american company wants to be "laughed" at so they don't bother coming up with any new ideas. instead, they let the other companies take the risk then wait to see if it's profitable before they jump on. america was built on innovative ideas!!! back in the 50's (might be 60's) the state of california was so certain that we'd be traveling in flying cars by now that on some of their major highways they actually build "small runway width" lanes.
now that's not the case, but it goes to show you that we at one point in history were willing to take the first step. it won't be until something really new & creative comes along that our economy will be fully restored. and it won't be until these large companies sack up before any of that happens.

Powered by Yahoo! Answers