Best energy storage system for vehicles...

[Phil Timmons]

This is really simple.

Why try to store much electric power ON BOARD the car to start with?  The electric grid goes almost everywhere a road does.  Electric cars can pick power directly up from the road and not even need batteries for anything more than pulling in a driveway, or around a parking lot.  

But when they pull onto a public street, they could pick the power up from road material itself.  The money made from selling the electric power to the drivers could be paid to the local, state, or federal government who owned the road to offset the fuel-tax loss.  

[daleh007]

Just wanted to jump in with my 2 cents. This country has a definate dependence on foreign oil. With that in mind, how much diesel oil is consumed each day by semi trucks? If the trucking industry were provided incentives to use bio diesel or some portion of bio diesel how much petroleum could be freed up for other uses. I see someone mentioned that you need methenol to make bio diesel and another comment that it can be derived from NG or methane. My father used to work at a sewage treatment plant years ago where they had 3 large stacks burning 24/7 to get rid of the methane generated by the treatment process. Seem's to me like there are pieces of this puzzle laying all around us and we need to put our heads together and get politics and big money interest moving in the correct direction.

Daleh007

[mcgivor]

Your batteries wont last long with those kind of discharges.  You mighr want to think about a hybird car.  You have an on-board generator, and a heat source, (for winter).

[Phil Timmons]

Hey mcgivor,

Thanks for the note back.  Did you mean that just going around a parking lot or up a drive would overly deep discharge an electric vechicle?  If the primary source were the grid? (in the road).  It seems like far less a load and cycle than an electric golf cart experiences.

But I suppose one could grid-enable parking lots and driveways, as well, and totally do away the batteries (or big capacitors).

And yeah, I can see where heat (and cooling) could be an issue, but since you would plenty of power available from the grid-enabled road itself, why not just use the road power for heating and cooling, as well?

I could see why one would want an Army Scout vehcile type hybrid (on board generator charging batteries and driving actual electrical motors -- as opposed to the Prius / Honda merged electric/mechanical bybrid system) for a grid-in-the-road system.  That would allow you either operate on the grid enabled roads or beyond them.

But if you wanted to mostly stay on grid-enabled roads (most folks drive in or around towns), you could have a really cheap car with no mechanical engine (or fuel) at all.

[Peter V]

First of all, oil is only used to produce a small portion of the power in the US.  The vast majority of electricity in the US is made from coal.

Regardless.  Let's assume we ARE using fuel oil to generate electricity.  New power plant can reach 60% efficiency converting oil to electricity.  Your average car, on the other hand, is about 15-20% efficient.  Power line transmission is about 95%, a typcial battery charger is about 75-80% (could be higher, just costs more), batteries are about 75% energy efficient, and a good EV drivetrain is about 90%.  Total EV efficiency oil to road is 25-30%. i.e. slightly better than internal cumbustion engine (ICE) powered cars.

EVs can also run powered by sunshine, wind and rain (solar, wind & hydro) something than no ICE can match.

Finally power plants tend to be way out away from cities, this moves the polution away from the areas that people are trying to breath.  And it's much easier to control/reduce pollution at one fixed source, than thousands of small mobile sources.

Finally EVs can charge at night (and most will) which is when the power companies have a surplus of power so this will help them produce power more efficiently since they won't have to ramp up as much in the morning and slow down as much at night.

[Peter V]

For what it's worth.  I did the calculations once, a couple years ago, based on the total farmland in the US and expected yields from oil bearing crops.  Even if we quit growing food and switch entirely to growing oil, we couldn't produce enough bio-diesel to offset 25% of the crude oil that we currently import.

So bio-diesel isn't THE answer, but it could be a valuable part of the answer.  We currently spend millions paying farmers not to grow crops.  It makes much more sense to pay them to grow bio-fuel, in essence we would get the oil for free since we are already wasting the money on NOTHING.  And it wouldn't effect current food production since the land in question is currently producing NOTHING.

Plus we could recycle a large portion of the used vegetable oils and animal fat that is currently being disposed of as "waste".

Finally, the waste product from canola oil production is a viable food source for cattle.  You could therefor reduce the amount of acreage currently used for cattle feed and switch that over to oil production too.

Combine this with ultra efficient diesel hybrids (100-150+ mpg?) that are within our current technological ability and it would make a (small) dent in our consumption of non-renewable fuels.  Not to mention a drastic reduction in the vehicle polution.

[Peter V]

FWIW the government finally did something right.  They recently passed a federal law that gives up to $1 per gallon tax rebate to encorange the production of bio-diesel.

The law is mostly intended as an incentive to the folks that 'mix' the biodiesel with dino-diesel.  However, it contains a clause where it can be applied at the individual level. Bassically if you dispense 100% biodiesel into a road going vehicle, then you are eligible for the full $1 per gallon rebate.  Of course you'd also have to pay the fuel tax, but that's only about $.26 a gallon.

So, for those of you that make your own biodiesel, I'd reccomend you look into this.  It could be worth a big chunk of change come next Apr 15th.

[Peter V]

Methanol isn't a "requirement", there are other chemicals that can be used.  Ethanol for example.  Methanol is just one of the easier ways to make biodiesel, that's why it's popular with the DIY crowd.

Also the methanol/ehtanol/etc. is used as a catalyst.  That means that it's possible to recover most of it afterwards.  For small scale production it's usually to much hassle for folks to bother.  In large scale production, you can bet that they are going to distill the methanol/etc back out afterwards.

My big question is what will they do with all of the glycerine produced as a waste product.  Small scale you can burn the gycerine for heating etc, but large scale?

[Peter V]

Fools cells have very poor overall efficiency, they aren't ready for prime time and won't be anytime soon.  The only reason anyone is bothering with them right now is because WW and the oil companies are using it as a smoke screen to distract consumers for viable alternatives to oil.

As for recharging time on EVs.  Current Lion technology can produce a 200 lb battery pack with enough energy storage for an EV with a 150-200 mile range.  If you made the battery pack out of small 25lb modules, then it would be easy to swap out batteries.  You could have battery stations along the highway and swap out your 8 modules in under 5 minutes by hand, or in less than 1 minute using automated machinery.

I use a 150-200 mile range vehicle as an example because that is the project range of fool-cell vehicles and they will take at least 15 minutes to refuel.

Using a standardized 25 lb module would allow you to do things like using twice as many to extend range as needed and using hundreds of them to power big rigs etc.

[Bryan1]

I did hear a couple of weeks ago about a bloke over here in Oz that developed a steam powered car to rival petrol powered cars, anyway the story goes Caltex found out about it and gave him a blank cheque and he hasn't been heard of since! Also you blokes might of heard of the orbital engine another Oz inspired invention to go by the wayside instigated by the oil companies. The story goes on but when will the inventive idea's of the little man be adopted by the mainstream. Not in my life time I reckon.

Cheers Bryan