Throwing in the towel...electric cars are going to be the future.

GameboyRMH wrote:

Kenny_McCormic wrote: carbon neutral(scrub CO2 from atmosphere)

Scrubbing CO2 from the atmosphere would be carbon negative (and this takes energy). Not introducing more fossil carbon into the atmosphere would be carbon neutral.

The idea being that you take carbon out of the air, make methanol or whatever with it(getting the hydrogen and oxygen via electrolysis), dump it in a car, burn it, capture the carbon out of the air and do it again. If you had a near infinite supply of nearly free and clean electricity, its trivial.

We need an electric grid not from the 30s, and power generation methods not from the 50s, before we can even THINK of realistically doing it either way.

tuna55 wrote:

GameboyRMH wrote:

tuna55 wrote:

Chris_V wrote:

tuna55 wrote:

Flight Service wrote: In reply to tuna55: What do you think is the largest cost prohibitor, the motors, the batteries, the Federal Regs, or the different production methodologies required to build them?

Batteries. A replacement for the Leaf is $5,500. There is no single component on a $30k vehicle that costs that much.

You obviously haven't priced crate replacement engines or transmissions lately (especially 6-8 speed automatics). I recently replace the 6 speed auto in my ex-roommate's 2003 VW and the USED price for a warranteed unit (not rebuilt) was $3500. Wanna know what a new one from VW would be?

But you can order individual part numbers within that engine

I wonder if you can order individual cells for the Leaf pack. They'll generally all wear out evenly, but it would reduce the largest single part cost.

Not currently.

Yeah, but that was the case for the Prius battery pack and cells too when they were new on the market.

Now the cells are easy and cheap to replace individually.

The battery cost is a non issue.

The infrastructure is a huge issue.

We need a more distributed power grid. I'm equipping my house with a solar panel system in preparation for a full electric car. The biggest cost at the moment is energy storage, but I see that cost dropping drastically in the future.

You guys need to remember that Tesla is building the Gigafactory for the sole purpose of making batteries. Most car manufacturers have already signed contracts to purchase batteries from their factory. To make things even more interesting, they're considering building at least one more of these factories. The location planning for these factories takes materials sourcing into account, so they aren't hauling all of the materials from across the world.

Mr. Musk is betting on the long term here.

Derick Freese wrote: Mr. Musk is betting on the long term here.

I agree.

But Mr. Musk is not Warren Buffet.

He is an eccentric genius inventor, not necessarily a role model for civic infrastructure development or long term investment.

SVreX wrote:

Derick Freese wrote: Mr. Musk is betting on the long term here.

I agree. But Mr. Musk is not Warren Buffet. He is an eccentric genius inventor, not necessarily a role model for civic infrastructure development or long term investment.

This, actually I'm not sure Tesla has ever turned a profit that wasn't attributable to accounting magic and/or cap and trade bullE36 M3. Musk does cool stuff, doesn't make it the future or anything like that.

SVreX wrote:

Derick Freese wrote: Mr. Musk is betting on the long term here.

I agree. But Mr. Musk is not Warren Buffet. He is an eccentric genius inventor, not necessarily a role model for civic infrastructure development or long term investment.

Sometimes that's what you need though. The status quo is crawling along while his technologies are so disruptive that the laggards are trying to legally hamstring him. Innovate or get left behind.

Even if it doesn't pan out he's dragging the entire industry into the new millennium.

In reply to The0retical: No he's not. EV's were here a 100 years before Musk, and even sold by a big 3 before he made his first dollar.

Sorry, but Musk is a promoter, not an innovator. Not that there's anything wrong with it.

He has hired some smart people sure. But he's really good at taking credit for their work, too.

alfadriver wrote: In reply to The0retical: No he's not. EV's were here a 100 years before Musk, and even sold by a big 3 before he made his first dollar. Sorry, but Musk is a promoter, not an innovator. Not that there's anything wrong with it. He has hired some smart people sure. But he's really good at taking credit for their work, too.

I realize that EVs are 100 years old, but I can't name another vehicle produced that would run 250 miles, practically (you know trunk, baby, groceries, and sitting upright), on electric only before the Model S. The EV1 was a good start but it wasn't terribly well refined. It was more like was a lab project that found it's way out. With all due respect here since in know you work in the industry; can tell me with a straight face that without Musk and the Tesla Roadster making electric cars sexy that the general perception of electric cars would be seen as upscale?

Most peoples perception prior to Tesla's marketing was that they were E36 M3ily built things driven by hippies. Now the public views them as upscale luxury items that can trickle down to the middle class. Manufacturers also want a piece of that market because they see that the demand is there with the excitement generated by Tesla. I can't see where that would have happened without Musk. So yes he's a promoter more so than an innovator in the automotive field.

He hasn't developed anything earth shattering with Tesla but he's raising a lot of awareness of what's possible with existing technologies and that caused a lot of people to sit up and take notice.

I won't even start on how I feel about this Boeing / SpaceX debacle.

Sorry for the 50 edits I type slow on the phone.

SVreX wrote: But we won't be able to afford it. I work for a company that does road construction- it's REALLY expensive. The Federal Highway Administration estimates that each mile of Interstate cost $20.6 million. Smart roads could easily cost twice that, especially with the demolition costs added.

A little late to the discussion, but how much of that $20M was for land acquisition? Which wouldn't be a factor in retrofitting the existing roads for "smart" cars.

Why the need to demolish anything? I have seen crews install loops for traffic light control in existing roads dong nothing more than cutting a slot in the roadway with a masonry saw. Admittedly the "slot" would have to be larger but still would not require demolition of the existing road.

The Volt is the bees knees. Go test drive one. Put it in sport mode, and select L instead of D. You'll be grinning like a 14 year old hooning a golf cart for the first time.

Electric has a long way to go for real parity with gas, but it's beginning to get good. Tesla is also quite nice, and certainly a better way to spend 100k than some fat german sausage mobile...

I find Musk to be the PT Barnum of the business world. He does a great job of getting subsidies and building a hype. But that is just me.

An interesting thing that is not talked about is how will the highway taxes be collected on EV's. Since currently they are collected on gas sales. They are not going to just let that stream of revenue die. Are they going to tax electric power into the home? Just something that is rarely talked about.

GameboyRMH wrote:

Kenny_McCormic wrote: carbon neutral(scrub CO2 from atmosphere)

Scrubbing CO2 from the atmosphere would be carbon negative (and this takes energy). Not introducing more fossil carbon into the atmosphere would be carbon neutral. I'd still put my bets on EV technology over bio/synth gasoline. EV technology's hurtling forward like something from the computer industry, and biogasoline hasn't gone anywhere since the Carter administration - fossil companies have interfered by buying patents and sitting on the technology, but the same is true of EVs. Synthetic gasoline has been under production the whole time and it's barely competitive with petrogasoline.

I don't think it would benefit any company to buy patents and technology and "sit on them" if they were viable.

Why wouldn't they just start using those ideas and make new products to improve their image AND make money (which is what companies are supposed to do). It seems like a win - win.

wvumtnbkr wrote:

GameboyRMH wrote:

Kenny_McCormic wrote: carbon neutral(scrub CO2 from atmosphere)

Scrubbing CO2 from the atmosphere would be carbon negative (and this takes energy). Not introducing more fossil carbon into the atmosphere would be carbon neutral. I'd still put my bets on EV technology over bio/synth gasoline. EV technology's hurtling forward like something from the computer industry, and biogasoline hasn't gone anywhere since the Carter administration - fossil companies have interfered by buying patents and sitting on the technology, but the same is true of EVs. Synthetic gasoline has been under production the whole time and it's barely competitive with petrogasoline.

I don't think it would benefit any company to buy patents and technology and "sit on them" if they were viable. Why wouldn't they just start using those ideas and make new products to improve their image AND make money (which is what companies are supposed to do). It seems like a win - win.

I HATE this argument, and I don't hate many things.

The entire US patent office is public information with a searchable website. if there were a proverbial 100 mpg patented, you could look it up and find out exactly how it worked. If it did not explain exactly how it worked, you would be free to generate a near copy and sell it.

tuna55 wrote:

wvumtnbkr wrote: I don't think it would benefit any company to buy patents and technology and "sit on them" if they were viable. Why wouldn't they just start using those ideas and make new products to improve their image AND make money (which is what companies are supposed to do). It seems like a win - win.

I HATE this argument, and I don't hate many things. The entire US patent office is public information with a searchable website. if there were a proverbial 100 mpg patented, you could look it up and find out exactly how it worked. If it did not explain exactly how it worked, you would be free to generate a near copy and sell it.

Companies do sit on technology. You can see what it is, but you can't do anything with it commercially unless you want to get your ass sued off. Or even sometimes non-commercially (See: Microsoft patent on automatic privilege escalation ("UAC") prompt, and why you have to manually escalate privileges in Linux)

Here's why EVs skipped straight from lead-acid to Li-ion. Toyota did get the RAV4 EV in before the lock:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_encumbrance_of_large_automotive_NiMH_batteries

Here's why we don't have a biofuel gasoline substitute on the market:

http://www.greenpatentblog.com/2013/09/11/betting-on-biobutanol-and-battling-butamax-a-conversation-with-gevos-general-counsel/

Kenny_McCormic wrote:

nderwater wrote: I think what Tuna was getting at is that engines are componentized--a head gasket can be changed on one bank of a V8 without replacing the whole engine, valve seals can be renewed, or a damaged oil plan is easily replaced for example. If a cell goes bad in a Leaf's batter pack, or road debris punctures part of the pack and doesn't burn the car to the ground that's it--the whole thing requires replacing.

FTFY, li-ion makes gasoline look like freakin water from a safety standpoint.

I wouldn't say that. If you pierce your gas tank there's a good chance the gas could ignite too, and the fire could go wherever the fluid carries it instead of being restricted to the component itself (until it burns through to other things).

GameboyRMH wrote: If you pierce your gas tank there's a good chance the gas could ignite to

Really? Do you have experience in this matter? If you pierce your gas tank, the fluid will leak out.

If I drop a match on a piece of wood, it burns. If I drop a match on spilled gas, it burns.

People's views of safety and danger are seriously skewed sometimes. While gas can be dangerous, it REALLY isn't "as" dangerous as it has been made out to be. Can catastrophic things happen? Yes. But to say that piercing a gas tank leads to fuel igniting is wholly disingenuous.

Edit- At the same time, lithium-ion batteries can self ignite. So yea, they are more dangerous IMO.

And yet we have carbeques every day with gas engine cars, and more exotics per thousand have burned down spontaneously than any EVs. So yeah, i think that LiI spontaneously burning down is overhyped and overblown to the point of ridiculousness.

bmw88rider wrote: An interesting thing that is not talked about is how will the highway taxes be collected on EV's. Since currently they are collected on gas sales. They are not going to just let that stream of revenue die. Are they going to tax electric power into the home? Just something that is rarely talked about.

Most likely - annual registration fees. This would be pretty easy to implement in PA since we renew annually anyway. Just raise it for EV's (currently $36/yr for passenger cars). People would whine, but whatever. They'd actually make a lot more money off me if they did that as I buy 90% of my fuel in NJ.

Doing some rough calculations, such a plan would have the potential to be a substantial bill. If I use a rough calculation of 12K miles per year drivng at say 26 mpg multiplied by the current $.418/gal tax (potentially $.58 in '17) that would be about $192.

bmw88rider wrote: I find Musk to be the PT Barnum of the business world. He does a great job of getting subsidies and building a hype. But that is just me. An interesting thing that is not talked about is how will the highway taxes be collected on EV's. Since currently they are collected on gas sales. They are not going to just let that stream of revenue die. Are they going to tax electric power into the home? Just something that is rarely talked about.

This is the beauty of the thing...the highway will bill for time on its grid and miles driven. Huge source of revenue. Surface streets, where you are running on the battery, can be tax free. If need be, the highway tax can be high enough to subsidize the municipal roads.

Is this a monster size undertaking? Yeah, sure as E36 M3 is. But back in the day this was the kind of stuff the USA did. Kinda as crazy as digging the Panama Canal.

wvumtnbkr wrote: I don't think it would benefit any company to buy patents and technology and "sit on them" if they were viable.

Totally incorrect.

A law firm can buy a viable patent, and sit on it with the intent to make their revenues from law suits.

You are assuming that the owners of patents want to be producers of the products.

A company could buy a patent that competes with their primary product for the purpose of keeping it off the market.

GameboyRMH wrote: I wouldn't say that. If you pierce your gas tank there's a good chance the gas could ignite too, and the fire could go wherever the fluid carries it instead of being restricted to the component itself (until it burns through to other things).

Chris_V wrote: And yet we have carbeques every day with gas engine cars, and more exotics per thousand have burned down spontaneously than any EVs. So yeah, i think that LiI spontaneously burning down is overhyped and overblown to the point of ridiculousness.

First of all, the sample size of fuel-consuming vehicles vs electric vehicles is such that, yes, you are going to hear far more stories of gas carbeques than EV carbeques (which have happened already, BTW).

Second, from your comments I don't believe either of you has ever done much fire-fighting before. I don't think Li-ion batteries are all garage fires waiting to happen, but in case of controller malfunction or other circumstance, a fire in a large Li-ion battery is going to be a much bigger problem than fire with a fuel tank. Yes, a fuel tank can BLEVE (Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion) under certain circumstances, but gasoline can be easily extinguished. Even if you don't have any AFFF (Aqueous Film-Forming Foam) you can still use water and proper technique to knock down the fire and cool the fuel to below it's ignition temp. How do you extinguish a Li-ion battery fire in a car? You don't. There are extinguishing agents that can form a hard shell around a burning battery, but that doesn't address cooling, and any cracking of the shell reintroduces oxygen and lights it off again, so it's not practical for use in a vehicle where a large battery is an integrated portion of the structure. On the aviation side of things, the SOP for a Li-ion battery fire in an aircraft is to remove it and bury it (eliminates oxygen source and ground acts as massive heat sink to gradually cool it to below ignition temp). There is a secondary method, which involves placing it into a modified 55-gal barrel with some holes in the bottom, and keeping a firehose constantly flooding the drum (same idea, starve of oxygen and water as heat sink, the drains and fresh water supply are necessary to ensure the water stays cool). Think either of those methods would be practical with a battery the size of the ones in an EV?

mrybczyn wrote: The Volt is the bees knees. Go test drive one. Put it in sport mode, and select L instead of D. You'll be grinning like a 14 year old hooning a golf cart for the first time. Electric has a long way to go for real parity with gas, but it's beginning to get good. Tesla is also quite nice, and certainly a better way to spend 100k than some fat german sausage mobile...

Could not agree more. I absolutely love our Volt and I am a pretty hardcore "sportscar" guy. The instant torque is addictive, the fuel savings are even better. Its just a cool car plain and simple.

Concerns about "the grid" are overblown.. the amount of electricity EVs draw in charging is incremental compared to the regular power usage of an American house.

dculberson wrote: Concerns about "the grid" are overblown.. the amount of electricity EVs draw in charging is incremental compared to the regular power usage of an American house.

I'm no expert, but I'm inclined to agree. My parents' electric usage/bill has gone up about 10% since they bought their Leaf. If multi-car households had every car convert to full electric, then there's more sizable draw. Now if the country went in whole hog and all commercial/fleet/shipping vehicles also converted to electric, then I could see a real potential for undermining the grid.

dculberson wrote: Concerns about "the grid" are overblown.. the amount of electricity EVs draw in charging is incremental compared to the regular power usage of an American house.

I love facts. You're right!

I charge an EV every night after using 30-100 miles of range and it affects my electric bill by something like 10%.

Now I guess if everyone used 10% more electricity tomorrow, it would cause an issue. But then again, if everyone used 10% less tomorrow, it would also be a problem. I am pretty sure it's a non-issue.