Electric Cars.... The joke is on you.... (auto, SUV, MPG)
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This is one of the new electric cars on the market that has been getting all sorts of news coverage. Goes 90 MPH and 100 miles between eight hour charges. Sells for somewhere between twenty five to forty thousand dollars depending on options.
Now the "Joke" part. They kept touting that it uses no gas and is Eco friendly as do other electric cars. Which of course is a farce.
To make electricity to charge these cars requires a power source, in most cases is a coal fired power plant, which is the same type of power that the goofballs that buy these cars don't want built, as well as nuclear power plants.
So they are all going to buy these, take them home and plug them in and since there is no "Surplus" power around, they are going to cause massive "Brownouts" or just "Blackouts"... And they will be clueless to understanding why because they had nothing to do with it, in their own feeble mindset.
Oh, and by the way, they will charge for eight hours, like your water heater never shut off... will cost more than a gallon of gas in an SUV for a hundred mile charge...
To make electricity to charge these cars requires a power source, in most cases is a coal fired power plant, which is the same type of power that the goofballs that buy these cars don't want built, as well as nuclear power plants.
So they are all going to buy these, take them home and plug them in and since there is no "Surplus" power around, they are going to cause massive "Brownouts" or just "Blackouts"... And they will be clueless to understanding why because they had nothing to do with it, in their own feeble mindset.
Actually there have been numerous studies done showing there is significant excess electricity during the evening and early morning. Most power stations are set up to deliver peak power output which occurs between somewhere between 10 AM - 4 PM. You cannot easily shut down reactors so the extra electricity goes to waste.
Even if 50% of cars on the road were purely plug-in hybrids no additional power plants would have to be built (Source: Plug-in Hybrids, the cars that will recharge America). In addition even if these cars got their electricity strictly from coal power plants, over all emissions would be less.
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Oh, and by the way, they will charge for eight hours, like your water heater never shut off... will cost more than a gallon of gas in an SUV for a hundred mile charge...
Also not true, with typical electricity rates it costs around $1.00 to charge the cars overnight, to travel 40-60 miles. Think about what you said, an SUV that gets 15 mpg would use $13 in gas to go 100 miles, an electric car would use $2.
Your poll has nothing to do with your inaccurate ramblings. However I don't think electric cars will be bought in large numbers until they come down significantly in price and the cost of gas increases to $8 - $10/gallon.
The Congressional Research Service in a recent report to Congress questions the advantages between now and 2050 of Electric or Plug-in Hybrid Technology for two reasons. Sales will be limited and the power has to come from a constrained infrastructure so that it could cost more and the power would come from existing high CO2 sources so greenhouse gases could actually increase over use of conventional autos.
I'm not sure that's true, though, as far as limited sales if the period in question is until 2050. Sales are seriously limited right now, as production is seriously limited - for the most part awaiting some kind of battery price and tech breakthrough to get up above the 100-miles-per-charge in a 2- or 4-seater.
If you have a link to the report (I goggled it and couldn't come up with it) that'd be great, because I wonder what their assumptions are about peak use, charging and grid capacity. I believe they also argue that more coal power plants would be necessary to fill demand, which is sort of the point of off-peak charging compared to peak use charging.
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If you have a link to the report (I goggled it and couldn't come up with it) that'd be great, because I wonder what their assumptions are about peak use, charging and grid capacity. I believe they also argue that more coal power plants would be necessary to fill demand, which is sort of the point of off-peak charging compared to peak use charging.
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The full report I was reading seems to have disappeared but several sites have saved a PDF to the section on green house gases. Here is one...
Actually there have been numerous studies done showing there is significant excess electricity during the evening and early morning. Most power stations are set up to deliver peak power output which occurs between somewhere between 10 AM - 4 PM. You cannot easily shut down reactors so the extra electricity goes to waste.
Even if 50% of cars on the road were purely plug-in hybrids no additional power plants would have to be built (Source: Plug-in Hybrids, the cars that will recharge America). In addition even if these cars got their electricity strictly from coal power plants, over all emissions would be less.
Also not true, with typical electricity rates it costs around $1.00 to charge the cars overnight, to travel 40-60 miles. Think about what you said, an SUV that gets 15 mpg would use $13 in gas to go 100 miles, an electric car would use $2.
Your poll has nothing to do with your inaccurate ramblings. However I don't think electric cars will be bought in large numbers until they come down significantly in price and the cost of gas increases to $8 - $10/gallon.
Alot of what you say has merit except for some smaller points. Now days most people in metro areas commute more than sixty miles to get to work, once there, they would have to plug in the car and it would be during the Peak hours verses off peak as you implied, which would put a strong drain if these were in any kind of numbers or work sites supplied power to start with.
Another item that are not addressed by the "Pro Electric car crowd" is that peak hours if I recall correctly is from about six AM to about ten PM when the lights start going out for the night. That said, electric car owners would have to have the car on some kind of timer for charging after that period. When batteries have taken a full charge like that, they need a certain amount of "Cool down" time before they are operated. Charging creates heat and that would push the plug in time to during the peak hours to allow the owner to use the car for work the next morning.
Also they don't mention that in colder weather, the batteries will not function as well either, so the range is dropped considerably.
In my experiance, to charge a industrial electric 4000 lb capacity "Forklift", it requires an eight hour charge (200+- Amps on 220 Volts with newer systems), eight hours to cool the battery down and it gets about eight hours of run time.
As far as the cost to operate, I would assume that the charge rate for the car batteries is going to be at about a smaller 2 to 3 KW load (or more) for an average of 8 hours charge time. That will seem to be a bit more than a $1.00 per charge, and it appears the batteries are pretty small and don't have much of a capacity or power to the wheel, and clearly not much of a range at only 100 miles. Although it may be a bit cheaper than an SUV up front, what you forgot is that these batteries are also only good for a few years and cost about $5,000.00+ to dispose/replace as part of the operational costs per hour and would have to be recharged twice daily for most people that wanted to use them... provided they can find a place to plug in for the workday.
Here in Alaska, I doubt we could ever use them at all except for a few months in the summer in the bigger cities. The distances to travel between work and home for most people would far out range most of the electric cars to date. Then again, there is the extremes in cold and such to contend with too.
Anyway, would like to hear your thoughts.
Last edited by starlite9; 02-16-2009 at 01:37 AM..
dont think a 100,000 dollar car is on the american budget right now. most are thinking about what will happen after the last unemployment check. plus americans have figured out that gas prices are very sensitive to use, you dont drive-- gas price goes down. unlike the boldface lie that we were told that there was a supply issue and that auto use had little effect on prices. americans are getting poorer, but smarter.
Thanks, I tried to copy and paste the section on the electric cars, but it had too much garbage (protocol stuff) that came with it to read. Maybe someone else can get it to work.
Anyway, they didn't seem to think the emissions were going to be better, overall. Instead of the cars putting out the green house gases, it would be the power plants, since most power is produced by Coal fired plants, the pollution levels would stay about the same or even go up.
Nuclear is by far the cleanest source, but not politically popular. Wind generation needs power grids built and has it's downsides too from the Animal groups because they seem to slice and dice birds of the endangered species types. Hydro is great, but nobody wants to have a nearby river dammed and valleys flooded.
Pretty tough route.
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