Thursday, April 17, 2014

Which countries now have full-electric car technology besides China and Japan?

Q. BYD e6 electric full-size SUV: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_e6

Nissan LEAF compact electric car: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Leaf

* Chevrolet Volt is not full-electric besides it needs gasoline as fuel.


Answer
It depends upon what you mean by "full-electric car technology" and by asking "which countries"...

Electric cars are not a national phenomena. They are things. National policies can promote electric cars but to my knowledge no country has nationalized an electric car building company and is producing electric cars on their own. Corporations may give some a feeling of national pride or identity but many corporations are multi national and may hold allegiance to no country.

Countries and areas that promote electric cars with incentives are more likely to attract corporations that are making electric cars. Such companies are in some ways not very different than other corporations. If an area will provide certain grants, property, utilities, or tax incentives then companies are more likely to build a plant in that location. Having cheap labor and reasonable lines of supply are also a plus. Selling their products may require a different set of incentives to attract buyers.

A case in point may be "Better Place." http://www.betterplace.com/ This company does not make cars. They sell a battery swapping service. They have several international initial target locations including: Israel, Denmark, Australia and Hawaii, San Francisco and Canada. The nissan leaf was to be a part of their system and may be in the future. For now they are swapping batteries on the Renault Fluence ZE. http://www.betterplace.com/ By some measure this might be considered a "full-electric car technology," but to what country are you going to attribute this technology? Shai Agassi, the companies founder and CEO has lived in California and Israel.

The Tesla Roadster is an American company and a media success. It is now selling their cars internationally, but the actual number of vehicles sold is presently just over 1000.1 Their are many lessor known electric vehicle companies that may happily sell you a vehicle that is hardly a production run. For a full production run of a full electric vehicle (BEV: battery electric vehicle) that is fully highway capable in the US we are looking to the Nissan Leaf as a first. Zap vehicles have been built in China for years and sold by an American Company internationally as motorcycles but we might not necessarily put these in the same class as the Nissan Leaf. The same may be true of other of the ess expensive Chinese cars.

I would agree that the Volt is not a "full electric" vehicle, but it is more electric than the more parallel hybrid prius. From a purist point of view perhaps even a BEV is not a pure electric vehicle as it uses chemistry in the batteries. A pure electric might use ultracapacitors for storage or something like this: http://electric-vehicles-cars-bikes.blogspot.com/2009/08/korean-researchers-develop-electric.html

Is it possible to charge an electric car using solar power or static electricity?




njshaw93


These are just random thoughts I had. If anyone was inspired to make anything, please let me know and give me a slice of the profits. Thanks for your time.


Answer
There is a film out that you can see what cars like this (solar). It's about a teacher who inspires her students to build a solar car good enough to compete nationally in the United States and internationally in Australia.

Follow this like to find out about the film.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117427/




Powered by Yahoo! Answers

How much does an electric car cost?




mobleez


How much does the average electric car cost?
How much does it cost to charge one?
Does it cost any extra to run and keep?
If anyone knows just how much a car costs to own (buying and keeping) that would be brill.
Thanks



Answer
How much does the average electric car cost?
There are limited options for buying an electric car from a major manufacturer at the moment (Jan 2013). Tesla Model S $50,000 and up, Nissan Leaf $34,000, Mitsubishi imeiv $29,000, Smart ED $25,000, and a couple others I forget about.

How much does it cost to charge one?
Since they're tiny, the smart car or the imev will consume about 250 watt hours per mile. So take your local utility rate to figure out the fuel cost. Example: 10¢ per 1000 watt hours (Kwh) means 10¢ will take you about 4 miles. 10¢ ÷ 4 miles = 0.025 (2¢) per mile. The larger tesla or the leaf will consume about 300whpm.

Does it cost any extra to run and keep?
No. Electric cars don't need belts, spark plugs, oil filters (or oil anyway), engine coolant, radiators, and a host of other maintenance hassles. The lithium batteries will need to be replaced every 10 years (ballpark).

If anyone knows just how much a car costs to own (buying and keeping) that would be brill.
An electric car costs about 1/7 that of a gas car for fuel (electricity vs gasoline) Also, an electric car costs â that of a gas car for upkeep and maintenance, even after battery replacement is considered. I'm not sure what you mean by "brill".

Did you hear Chevy has a new electric car called the spark?




Burning Pe





Answer
Americans are still somewhat clueless when it comes to electric cars, but Chevy's strategy is to sell the all-electric Spark heavily into Europe and Asia.
*
The car will debut in 2013.
*
GM has to go down this road. First of all, adding all electric cars to it's lineup improves it's average fuel economy, needed in order to meet future mandated fuel-efficiency standards.
*
Secondly, if American companies don't make electric vehicles, Asian and European car companies will steal the entire market.
*
Japanese carmaker Nissan just demonstrated 10-minute recharging for their Leaf electric car. Over the next few years, the range of the car will increase, and the cost of the vehicle will slowly come down. 5-minute recharge has also been demonstrated, for electric buses.
*
Walgreen drugs recently announced they are installing EV fast-chargers for the Leaf at their stores. Other retailers are considering this, too. (Meijer, Best Buy, CostCo.)
*
Put these things together, and you can see why US carmakers have to compete. Gas cars could be obsolete in 10 years. If anything, the Detroit automakers are not responding fast enough to this threat.
*
PS. - to the poster pointing out that some electricity is made with dirty energy, the same amount of dirty energy is used to refine gasoline - about 6 KWH of energy for each gallon refined. So both kinds of cars use the same amounts of "upstream" energy. But the gas car burns large amounts of dirty "downstream" energy, while the EV doesn't burn any. This is why EVs are so much cleaner, and much more energy efficient (and much cheaper to fuel.)




Powered by Yahoo! Answers