It's good to see some new electric vehicles coming on to the market at last.
Now if you have a property or off road application there are some cheaper alternatives ready to go.
E-Ride have some utility models that look good and practical.
http://www.e-ride.com/models/exv2.html
These are road registerable in some parts the USA.
Maybe instead of the expensive bells and whistles models being released in Australia, like the Mitsubishi EV for about $70,000, perhaps we need some more practical and less expensive cars like the Wheego from the USA.
These are going for a more acceptable price of $US19,000. If we are going to move away from oil these vehicles are good replacements for many urban commuters.
I like the way this US based company puts it's sales message across.
"We like to say we are changing the world one car at a time and we really are. The electric cars that we have sold have not only changed the way that their owners drive, but the way they live. These cars give our owners a way to further connect to the green lifestyle, offers them a chance to slow down (at only 35mph, there is no more racing through life), and really gives them an opportunity to be an example for other people."
My EV, an electric bike, makes me feel this way.
If you go through this site you will see a massive range of EV's available in the US. Vans, trucks, cars and motorbikes to suit almost any urban requirement. It's amazing how much we are being denied here in Australia.
These Vantage Canadian EV's offer a 30,000mile, 50000km, battery life.
franks
Member
Im keen to see a electric scooter 2-4Kw power 60km range, would be great for communting.
Small Petrol scooters are aprox $2k in price, would be nice to get a 2kw electric scooter for $2k
I ride at present for a 3.2km round trip each day, use a 200w Chineese Moped Scooter (got on eBay for $350 second hand), I do find the 200w limit a bit of a problem with small hills, so a 2kw scooter would be fantastic for me.
Here's another alternative rockabye for people wanting a more immediate electric car fix. A second hand prius + aftermarket PHEV pack represents another option. Add in the relatively cheap "Enginer" Plug in hybrid kit and you can have a car that reportedly does 2L/100km. This isn't as pure as straight electric but nor is it range limited. The prius is a thoroughly engineered, very comfortable and practical car with modern safety systems and conveniences. Best of all, its available now! No need to wait decades for Australian regulation to change so that lightweight electric vehicles built for other markets can be registered - just buy a second hand prius for $10-15k, add another $4k for batteries and the rest of the PHEV kit and away you go.
dymonite69
Member
When fossil fuels run out, personal commuting will be a luxury. Moving 1500kg of metal to transport a 70kg person is a very inefficient (and energy wasting) means of travel.
I would envisage that in one hundred years electrical vehicles will be used mainly for essential goods or for public transport. The rest of us will be commuting locally and by lightweight methods like electric bikes and mopeds.
Small scooters about 1.5kW are about $2850 in Brisbane, ride away.
http://ecomotionconcepts.rtrk.com.au/?scid=24898&kw=4276061
As for 2nd hand electric I can convert my 1994 Suzuki sedan in Brisbane for about $14500 but it is frustrating to see new light weight, purpose built EV's available for not much more, and they are new.
The links I put up are merely to show it's both possible and is happening around the world. There is no reason why we can't be building them here. Our very own CSIRO have already produced an efficient low cost battery.
LanceTurner
Key Master
Actually, the ultrabattery has around the same energy density as a regular lead-acid (slightly higher, but not much). Power density and lifetime are said to be longer (too early to know for sure yet though) but what matters for EV range is energy density. This is why almost all commercial EVs have ignored lead-acid and gone for lithium or similar higher density chemistries. Let's face it, no-one wants to be dragging around 500-600kg of lead acid battery and still only get a sub 100km range when lithium can do so much better for a lot less weight.
The main problem with lithium is, of course, the price, but that is falling now, a usable sized Thundersky bank can be had for under $15,000, even under $10,000 if you are happy with a lower range, and of course, you end up with a bank weighing less than half of a lead-acid bank for the same range...
There's a number of other technologies pretty close to market as well, worth looking around if you are considering an EV.
Have to say, while lead-acid are a robust and proven technology, I really don't think I would do a conversion with them unless it was a short range urban vehicle only...
There seem to be quite a lot of commercial EV's out there that have given up on waiting for low cost lithium and gone ahead with lead acid in one form or another. The links I posted would indicate this.
The Vantage vehicles lead acid AGM range, while limited, would be adequate for most peoples daily commute, and with a claimed 50,000km life seems like a good start.
LanceTurner
Key Master
True, there are a few, but only from the small makers from what I've seen, doesn't seem like any of the large car makers are considering lead acid. From an efficiency point of view, lead-acid doesn't make sense, too much weight, so therefore requires more energy to move the vehicle as it's heavier than an equivalent vehicle with better batteries. Lead-acid also have a shorter lifespan when cycled deeply, so battery changes are more frequent and so the overall costs are really no better than you can get with lithium, it's just the initial up-front cost is cheaper for lead acid.
Of course, as EV manufacturing ramps up and the large car makers start making their own batteries (several are doing this, either by buying local battery companies or working in colaboration with them, or even setting up their own battery plants), prices will go down. I expect that in 5-10 years, lithium EV batteries will be not much more expensive than lead-acid is now. Or maybe nickel-zinc, zinc-air or one of the other chemistries will take over from lithium, who knows, but there's finally real money being thrown at battery development...
More good news. They opened the first electric car charging station in Sydney today.
And that's just part of the story. Trigeneration project is also underway.
Edit: Some more relevant info here, and it mentions the modified Prius hybrids.
We'll run out of a lot of other things long before we run out of lithium if the current oil and coal burning lifestyle continues as it is. Things like food, water and a breathable atmosphere for example.
Electric and cars running on lots of other things are possible but we have to get off the runaway train we have created or it won't matter much in 30 years. A flywheel driven vehicle like the swiss bus fleet they built in the 1950's for example.
I think it is up to us all to try and use less and do things differently. My lithium powered electric bike is saving around 400 litres of ULP per year. Not much but better than nothing.
LanceTurner
Key Master
There's a great deal of lithium on the planet, and remember, for decades we have been throwing it away in the form of disposable batteries (billions of these a year globally). I expect that in decades to come we will start mining landfills for the materials in them, there would have to be considerable quantities of many metals in the average landfill...
But, it's not just lithium chemistries, there are numerous others based on zinc, nickel, iron, sodium etc that are suitable, and indeed have been used in electric vehicles. Rechargeable zinc-air batteries using a zinc slurry have been developed.
Nickel-zinc is a promising tech and these are already available in smaller cells, such as from Powergenix (www.powergenix.com). I have some of these and they beat NiMH hands down for capacity and energy density as well as power density. Large format versions of these should be ideal EV batteries if they can improve the cycle life a bit more. But their base materials are pretty cheap and very recyclable, so I expect we will see them fairly soon. There's some good info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel-zinc_battery and check out the vids at http://strobist.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-nizn-batteries-offer-lightning-fast.html to see just how fast these can repump a camera flash.
And there's even aluminium-air batteries, which could be used for critical vehicles and those where running costs are less of an issue. While not rechargeable, they have a massive energy density of around 1300Wh/kg (up to 6000Wh/kg theoretically) so they would give and EV a huge range. A 300kg battery in an EV that uses around 200Wh/km would go close to 2000km before needing replacement. Using an ultracap bank and regen braking would extend this considerably.
There's lots of options being looked at, lithium, while being the main chemistry being looked at now, won't be in the future, you can bet on that...
dymonite69
Member
From Wackipedia:
"The total amount of lithium recoverable from global reserves has been estimated at 35 million tonnes, which includes 15 million tons of the known global lithium reserve base.[44] This is enough for approximately 4 billion electric cars.[45]"
That sounds a lot until you realise that we power a lot more things than just cars.
It all fits in with the "less is more" approach. Less oil and coal will drive more innovation and research into energy efficiency. Less lithium will force more innovative alternatives like flywheels charged from renewables into use. This will address the base load power requirements that are so often referred to as impossible to achieve without fossil fuels or nuclear power.
http://www.upei.ca/~physics/p261/projects/flywheel1/flywheel1.htm
These technologies are just waiting for fossil fuels to become expensive and will be in the market very quickly once that happens.
kenn
Member
I'm interested to know what people's thoughts are on Fuel-Cell EV's fuelled by hydrogen. An eg. Honda have been trialling their FCX Clarity (http://automobiles.honda.com/fcx-clarity/) in California. I like that it still has a (relatively small) lithium battery, to supplement power to the power produced by the fuel cell, and it stores energy from the regenerative braking.
I don't know that much about them, so I was hoping to glean more information from you knowledgeable folks! I'm guessing that it wouldn't be much different than an LPG fuelled car in terms of refuelling and fuel storage (and any dangers associated with it).
The advantage it has over a solely battery EV is that refuelling only takes a few minutes (unless you do a battery swap for the battery car, which should also take a few minutes too) so you can easily extend the range of the car (if there are hydrogen fuel stations). A disadvantage I can think of is the price of hydrogen. I don't know what the price of hydrogen is atm, but I'm guessing it's more expensive than electricity. Also, I'm guessing that the cost of producing hydrogen will go down if fuel-cell EVs become more popular, and more innovations to produce hydrogen and economies of scale are taken advantage of.
Are there other advantages/disadvantages I haven't thought of. I would love to hear your thoughts.
The top gear review of the clarity made it sound like hydrogen was inevitably going to be the way of the future. I believe they misrepresented the case a little. A few issues with hydrogen are:
We don't actually have any in a suitable form
Producing hydrogen from water is currently energy intensive (ie it takes more energy to produce than it releases in a fuel cell)
Hydrogen molecules are very small making leaks very difficult(expensive) to eliminate
There is no hydrogen infrastructure in place unlike electricity where networks of some description run almost everywhere
for these reasons I think it quite unlikely that hydrogen will be the choice in the future. BattEry tech is already vastly better than a couple of years ago and with the money going into research now it will continue to improve.
Bruce Whites Mighty Boy EV conversion is a very well thought out and implemented project. He chose lead acid (AGM) batteries and his section on Battery Dilemma is worth reading.
LanceTurner
Key Master
Nice looking conversion, but there's no way in hell you'd get me in a mightyboy, let alone with the extra weight behind me, those things are death on wheels and have a very poor safety rating. To get an idea of this, check out http://www.aaa.asn.au/downloads/uscr.pdf and the risk figure on page 82 of http://www.monash.edu.au/muarc/reports/muarc203.pdf
dymonite69
Member
Same argument for the 4WDs on the road. "It gives me better visibility and if I am involved in a collision than I will survive. The poor sod in the Daihatsu buys it"
If everyone is riding in a lightweight vehicle or on a bike there wouldn't be an issue about safety because there is nothing big to crash into.
kenn
Member
Hi munter,
I saw the same Top Gear episode, which is what sparked my post. I agree that it was heavily biased toward the use of hydrogen as being an inevitability. That's why I made the post, hoping to get a more objective view.
I understand hydrogen production would be expensive and very energy intensive. But just like battery production, if enough funds and research went into it, couldn't that cost drop too?
The Clarity seems to have addressed the hydrogen leak problem. http://automobiles.honda.com/fcx-clarity/hydrogen-safety.aspx.
It's true that transporting hydrogen isn't as easy as electricity, but could it be possible to transport hydrogen just like we transport LPG now? Could we also use service stations to do our refuelling?
I'm not arguing that you're wrong munter, I genuinely would like to know if hydrogen is feasible for the future. I have little knowledge on the subject, my first exposure to the subject being that Top Gear report.
I guess one of the questions I have is, will we be able to make a road trip from Sydney to Perth in a battery powered EV? I guess you could with battery-swap, but I wouldn't want to wait an hour or more each time I needed to "refuel".
Kenn - I'm very happy to discuss further. I'm technology neutral (though perhaps don't sound it) and just hope that the best technology wins. Discussions like this one are a part of working out the properties of each technology.
It should probably be noted that the Top Gear episode is a good couple of years old and in the time since then the car manufacturers seem to have predominantly moved away from hydrogen and back to hybrids and batteries. Not solid proof that hydrogen is dead but perhaps some indication of their assessment of future technologies.
The energy intensity of hydrogen production may be able to be reduced through the use of catalysts and clever processes but these haven't been discovered yet. It may happen but I'm not massively optimistic. Given a highly energy intensive fuel production process that would almost inevitably involve the use of electricity, I suspect that future hydrogen production processes will still end up using more electricity than the equivalent use of batteries. This is speculation though and could prove to be wrong.
Refuelling time is definitely still an issue with electric cars (BEVs). Some of the newer chemistries seem to be able to handle much shorter charge times. Anything over an hour would seem to preclude a convenient long trip though so I think there is probably still a way to go on this front. In the interim, electric cars can start to be used for shorter trips using existing chemistries and existing electrical distribution.
Perhaps one area where I prefer the electric technology is that it could result in a better balance between private individuals and corporations. Electricity can be produced at home and this would mean that for some, independence from large corporations/foreign sources is viable. I think this would be a positive step for society. Because of the specialist infrastructure that hydrogen would require I think it would probably need large centralised production with distribution similar to the current oil industry. This isn't a major point but one worth a little thought perhaps.
By the way - an excellent article on the various emissions intensities of various fuel types/drive trains was produced a year or two ago. I may have put the link up here before but I'll include it below because I think it really deserves more public attention. The link is to an Autospeed article summarising the paper and there is a link to the actual paper underneath. It makes for fascinating reading:
http://autospeed.com.au/cms/title_Assessing-the-Alternatives/A_110155/article.html
Also have a look at this article for electric car optimism:
http://autospeed.com.au/cms/title_Electric-Cars-Now/A_111205/article.html
Benny
Member
I don't think hydrogen storage is "just like LPG". LPG, natural gas etc are fairly easily liquified which I guess would increase their energy density considerably. Storage of hydrogen is another of the issues that need to be overcome for use in cars, as I think it needs incredibly high pressures to liquify it. I know there have been many reports on storing it in special tanks containing a metal sponge type material that holds the hydrogen as a hydride compound and this increases the energy density a lot, but still not as good as LPG or petrol.
Anyone have any figures on typical storage energy density of H2 as compared to batteries ?
Lance, as for safety my electric bike is far riskier than the EV but one I am happy to accept. The mighty boy statistically is as safe as a Commodore V6 in the hands of a 17-18 year old. Ditto for Ford and Holden sports utilities. Young drivers in the mines are wiping themselves out every week in those up this way.
I think we need to remember these experimental vehicles are built by people frustrated by laws that prevent better technology entering the market. My electric bike is speed limited by law but a Commodore ute is legally able to exceed the speed limits in this country by more than 100% with no restriction on driver age or experience. The latter is capable of killing multiple innocent people per crash, and regularly does so, yet is still considered acceptable by the lawmakers.
dymonite69
Member
Myth: Car engines are relatively inefficient at converting energy into propulsion.
Truth: There is very little difference in efficiency between human propulsion and powered propulsion.
Yaris - 1000 kg of car burns 1.95L to travel 30km = 68 MJ of petrol
14 x 70 kg humans - 980 kg of people walking uses 6MJ/person/30km = 84 MJ of food
NB but cycling uses half the energy compared to walking
The waste comes from moving the extra weight of the car.
dymonite69
Member
Yes. But 'green' geeks think the problem lies with the 'inefficiency' of petrol engines. If only we had more efficient engines, light weight engines, aluminium engines, ceramic engines electric engines, hydrogen engines yada yada.......then we would have a sustainable solution. The problem nor the solution lies there.
CunningPlansDept
Member
Isn't "sustainable" a completely different argument centered around the source and closed-loop cycle of the energy?
If the energy powering the vehicle results in a net increase of our greenhouse gas level, it's unsustainable.
If the people who got there quicker because they used powered vehicle transport participate in an activity that used more energy than they would have while taking the slow option (or just got bored and ate more junkfood), then it's even more unsustainable.
Comparing food consumption energy to vehicle energy without looking at the total energy consumed over the course of the day and the source of the energy is dubious accounting, albeit a handy simplification.
I think we need to really highlight and focus on convenience based decisions and absolute non-sustainable energy usage.
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