Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2008 9:22 pm Post subject: How can we power electric cars in urban areas?
With no drives to park a car in, how are we to power electric cars in urban areas? Electricity cables dangling from windows, across pavements, with the possibility of being pulled out by passing jokers.
I don't get it? It's near impossible for some people to even park by their front door.
Last edited by kookomula on Tue Jun 17, 2008 9:31 pm; edited 1 time in total
They told me that their houses had power points at road side for keeping their cars warm so that the engines didn't freeze in winter.
If the UK can install NTL fibres everywhere then I'm sure we could install mains cables to the roadside. _________________ The Medium is the Massage - Marshall McLuhan.
But who would pay for that? An extra tax charged by the local council?
On a similar note, how would you feel about pedestrianising (with cycle lanes, scooters) large areas of central London and replacing buses with trams (following consultations with relevant groups regarding accessibility). What about the black cab drivers?
Is that completely unimaginable/unworkable? Maybe cars allowed later in the evening? With early am deliveries.
Much less of that dusty, dirty pollution on the roads, pavements, building facades or in our lungs. It would also be much more peaceful without traffic noise.
They have a very good bike hire system in Barcelona (bicing) where residents pay a small amount of money each year and are given a swipe card which gives them access to bikes stationed around the city, outside metro stations etc. I don't think they have them yet but bikes could be built with two little seats (like a trike) on the back to carry the kids.
The possibilities are....exciting, if a little damp.
Now the canals, if we could speed up the boats and motorise the locks.....
surely the answer is to design a removable battery which can be charged in the home, rather than...............
Quote:
Electricity cables dangling from windows, across pavements, with the possibility of being pulled out by passing jokers.
surely all the problems could be easily solved at the design stage, if the makers of such technology are serious in making it work.
however that is the question, are they serious in making it work? or just being seen to be trying whilst keeping the petrol method as the easiest and most reliable/cheaper method inorder to keep the vast majority on petrol and stop the technology taking off?
surely the answer is to design a removable battery which can be charged in the home, rather than...............
Quote:
Electricity cables dangling from windows, across pavements, with the possibility of being pulled out by passing jokers.
Removable batteries are unfeasible. The majority of the weight of even the latest electric cars such as the tesla sports car....
http://www.teslamotors.com/
... is the batteries.
If you have ever seen "Who Killed The Electric Car?" - the movie that got me hunting on the internet where I found www.ae911truth.org... then you will know that in California, the local authority financed Docking Car Parks where you could re-fill your batteries. I would suggest that most urban car parks could easily be adapted to do something similar with only a very minor uplift to the current pay-and-display charges.
I got into an argument once about how electric cars were "a bad idea" since the cost of delivering electricity was so inefficient there was a higher carbon footprint associated with electric cars! Firstly, right off I don't believe the figures (no doubt cooked up by the oil industry) but secondly, thirdly and everything else it doesn't make any sense: pence per mile: cheaper, diversity of supply (cf Oil monoploy), and... the reason why California wanted electric cars in the first place: pollution of inner cities. LA still has its car smog and poor child health issues, 2 decades after their attempt to produce the Zero Emission Mandate that asked for ONLY 10% of cars sold in California to be zero polluting within N years...
See the link: Oil... Bush... Oil... War... Oil... US economy down the drains due to... Oil...
I guess powering up an electric car is a simple as plugging it in to an electric socket.
If you have your own driveway or garage then it is straightforward. One charge on a modified toyota prius is enough for the whole day. Being a hybrid it will keep recharging itself as it is driven and has the petrol engine when the charge runs low.
A totally electric car of which there are many including citreon belingo, renault kangoo, GWhizz, mobility scooters, need an overnight charge to provide about 60-100 miles of driving. _________________
If the UK can install NTL fibres everywhere then I'm sure we could install mains cables to the roadside.
Perhaps... but of course they want us to consume their mind-bending sh*te, but don't want us to have cars of our own.
marky 54 wrote:
Quote:
surely the answer is to design a removable battery which can be charged in the home, rather than...............
It would be very heavy, and designing a high current connector that could be reliably mated / unmated 1000's of times would be very difficult (I believe).
Simon
(Aiming to double my carbon footprint over the next 5 years.... _________________ If you want to know who is really in control, ask yourself who you cannot criticise.
"The hunt for 'anti-semites' is a hunt for pockets of resistance to the NWO"-- Israel Shamir
"What we in America call terrorists are really groups of people that reject the international system..." - Heinz "Henry" Kissinger
The quirky beginning with the funeral... just wait and let the documentary get going and it is excellent. In the end, you can understand the funeral and it doesn't seem so quirky.
Joined: 27 Mar 2006 Posts: 486 Location: Manchester
Posted: Sat Jun 21, 2008 3:50 pm Post subject:
The charging on the road without a driveway issue, is certainly a problem.
This site reckons some councils will install power points for EV owners and apparently some supermarkets are now offering free charging stations.
http://www.drivelectric.com/index.htm UK based EV promotion site that sells used Citroen Berlingo Electriques which they reckon are the best value EV option around.
This site offers EV conversion of any vehicles, though it costs some and they also sell possibly the highest performance Uk EV the AVT-100E . it'll set you back 47 - 76k so perhaps its better to wait for the future Tesla models when they finally make a UK appearance. Though I would expect them to get stolen or joy ridden in an instant. http://www.everything-ev.com/avt100e-high-performance-electric-car-p-2 81.html
I'm looking forward to the 'Who saved the Electric Car' forthcoming sequel. _________________ The Peoples United Collective TPUC.ORG
The charging on the road without a driveway issue, is certainly a problem.
This site reckons some councils will install power points for EV owners and apparently some supermarkets are now offering free charging stations.
http://www.drivelectric.com/index.htm UK based EV promotion site that sells used Citroen Berlingo Electriques which they reckon are the best value EV option around.
This site offers EV conversion of any vehicles, though it costs some and they also sell possibly the highest performance Uk EV the AVT-100E . it'll set you back 47 - 76k so perhaps its better to wait for the future Tesla models when they finally make a UK appearance. Though I would expect them to get stolen or joy ridden in an instant. http://www.everything-ev.com/avt100e-high-performance-electric-car-p-2 81.html
I'm looking forward to the 'Who saved the Electric Car' forthcoming sequel.
I just viewed "Who Killed the Electric Car" video again and, er again, I'm all choked up by GM taking away the EV1s. "They had to be disabled".... They had to be stopped, more likely.
I don't know about the sequel - thanks for the info.
it'll set you back 47 - 76k so perhaps its better to wait for the future Tesla models when they finally make a UK appearance.
There are alot of cheaper alternatives.
Toyota Rav4 has been making an electric model for over a decade. Renault Kangoo, the Berlingo as you mentioned, the plug in Prius a modified version of the hybrid, Honda has a version too.
Tesla will always be a small production car like a TVR.
The real problem with electrics is charging at home may not be a problem, but running out of charge will be a problem so route planning is important.
Dont forget in Britain we have had electric vehicles like milk floats, post office vans and in the city of London town clearing vans for a long time like 50 years. The only reason we are not driving ekectric today is because of the oil lobby which controls our government. _________________
it'll set you back 47 - 76k so perhaps its better to wait for the future Tesla models when they finally make a UK appearance.
There are alot of cheaper alternatives.
Toyota Rav4 has been making an electric model for over a decade. Renault Kangoo, the Berlingo as you mentioned, the plug in Prius a modified version of the hybrid, Honda has a version too.
Tesla will always be a small production car like a TVR.
The real problem with electrics is charging at home may not be a problem, but running out of charge will be a problem so route planning is important.
Dont forget in Britain we have had electric vehicles like milk floats, post office vans and in the city of London town clearing vans for a long time like 50 years. The only reason we are not driving ekectric today is because of the oil lobby which controls our government.
Toyota Rav4 - not EV - no EV version availabe for retail
Renault Kangoo - not EV - I'm unaware of any EV version available to the public
Plug-in Prius - only available as a non-Toyota upgrade and is very expensive (about £8000, I understand)
Honda has discontinued its Hybrid
Of course there is the G-wizz - 40mph top speed and only about 40 mile range therefore only suitable for inner cities.
I agree the only reason we do not electric vehicles on the streets is the oil lobby...
If you see the Who Killed the Electric Car documentary it is clear to me that as soon as Bush arrived in the White House, the electric car was dead.
Joined: 27 Mar 2006 Posts: 486 Location: Manchester
Posted: Sat Jun 21, 2008 8:42 pm Post subject:
The sequel film gets a mention in this Tesla interview which also covers the GM Chevy Volt (40 miles per charge?) plus a kind of EV1 apology and I agree it seems hard to find a decent EV.
Thanks for info Karlos as I'd forgotten the RAV4 EV and hadn't heard of the Prius or Kangoo EV.
The Prius as Scienceplease states and you mentioned (PHEV version) is better than the Hybrid but at a cost, with one California company offering the upgrade at upto $19,000. But that does give it a significant mpg economy. The UK company said to be doing similar had nothing on their website as to this being offerred in the UK. In addition the CIA;s Michael Woolsey drives a Prius with a 'Bin Laden hates this car!" bumper sticker as he reckons every petrol stations cash register is an Al-Qaeda collection box.
RAV4 EV may well be like golddust http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/09/toyota_rav4_ev.php plus the batteries are discontinued thanks to a Texaco Chevron merger (seemingly to kill them off). The remaining ones among their community seem limited in supply and this article suggests that Toyota will snap up and remove (for shredding presumably) any that come back into dealership hands http://plugsandcars.blogspot.com/2008/01/toyota-snags-rav4-ev.html . A real pity as the RAV4 EV certainly had the range, space, speed and relatively fast reharging required.
The other thing I dislike about the PHEV vehicles is the schills running for office are giving them their backing as wiki states here on the PHEV page:
Quote:
Public support
As of February, 2008, all three of the major U.S. presidential candidates have taken a position on plug-in hybrids:
Senator Barack Obama delivered a speech on February 28, 2006 calling for every government car to be a PHEV.[102] On April 19, 2007, Obama joined with senators Maria Cantwell and Republican Orrin Hatch to introduce legislation providing: tax credits to consumers who purchase plug-ins, patterned after existing incentives for conventional hybrids; tax incentives for the U.S. production of PHEVs and dedicated parts; and incentives for electric utilities to provide rebates to customers who purchase plug-ins, scaled to provide larger incentives to utilities producing greener energy.[103]
Senator John McCain pledged on April 23, 2007 to promote partnerships between utilities and automakers to accelerate the deployment of plug-in hybrids.[104]
Senator Hillary Clinton called on February 11, 2008 for investment in research and to stimulate demand for the first commercial PHEVs by investing $2 billion in research and development to reduce the cost and increase the longevity and durability of batteries; offering consumers tax credits of up to $10,000 for purchasing a plug-in hybrid; and adding 100,000 plug-in hybrids to the federal fleet by 2015.[105]
I realise the Tesla's are limited run and its annoying they are built in Norwich and not due here until next year at the earliest, would cost a bomb to insure and would get nicked pronto but I do think they are the way forward in promoting electric vehicles that have performance and attractive qualities. I just hope they do hold their promise to produce saloon and other versions within a few years at semi-affordable prices. Something along the RAV4 EV lines will do nicely. _________________ The Peoples United Collective TPUC.ORG
Bob Lutz came over well. He mentioned the PR disaster associated with the EV1 crushing - well, duh! Let's hope they are serious about the Volt and solving the "battery problems". It would be a real problem if the batteries did require replacement after a year or 18 months... I wonder whether Tesla have solved that.
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