While it's fascinating to see development of very high mileage vehicles, let's hope that the engineers consider the hard fact that millions of us live in places that get bad weather, such as snow. We need high mileage vehicles - or at least substancially higher mileage vehicles - in places where the weather is less than optimum.

What I see being touted most often are what I call "sunshine cars" such as the Apteria Typ-1e). Those cars would be great in places like California, Arizona, etc. where most people don't see snow unless they go looking for it. Given that many million people live in such places, there's a viable market for sunshine cars. However, batteries tend to lose power when they get cold. I suspect that's one reason why GM only leased their Impact electric car in California and Arizona (IIRF). There's also the issue of bad weather driveability. As impressive as it is, the Apteria would probably be as helpless in even a few inches of snow as my neighbor's Cooper.

I'm very interested in GM's Volt because it's a plug in electric car that can carry a small generator (gas, diesel, fuel cell, etc.) to augment the vehicle's range. Now, if the thing will drive well in snow, I'll likely be an early adopter.

The SCiB has been tested to give full discharge down to something like -22 F.

It is my understanding that besides coal, the continental USA has tremendous untapped natural gas deposits as well. Just something else to lump under that umbrella.

If we go far enough along the 'massive nuclear program' branch, using some of that energy to convert coal to syngas is also an option.

If that 5 min charging time for 90% power is accurate... a gas-electric or even pure electric using that technology sounds to be somewhere in my future. That would be within the range of 'acceptable time loss' if I have to recharge in the middle of the day when I'm on the road (in other words, the most inconvenient refueling situation most Americans would face, most times of the year). Without having to spend multiple hours or overnight charging, I wouldn't be forced to have a line run to the parking lot of my apartment complex, while still having the option if it was worth my effort and money.

If top speeds are acceptable.... yeah. This is probably the first electric car tech I've been truly interested in since I was old enough to know what I was talking about.

The SCiB has been tested to give full discharge down to something like -22 F.

That's very good performance. The 50 amp charging level is important (bring a thick cable) but the other part that isn't answered is the voltage. It takes 746 watts to equal one horsepower (that's a physical constant not subject to change). For DC circuits, watts = voltage x current. If you're talking about an electric car with any kind of acceptable range and payload. you'll need quite a few kilowatt/hours of stored electrical power.

To recharge those batteries to a 90% level in 5 minutes with a 50 amp current, you'll need a handle lot of voltage. Suppose it's a lightweight car with a 20 HP motor and a one hour driving range. Given normal electrical losses and inefficiencies, you'd need somewhere around 20 kilowatt/hours of electricity storage to accomplish this. Recharging to 90% capacity means you'll need to store 18 kilowatt/hours. Doing it in 5 minutes means you effectively need to charge at a rate of 216 kilowatts. Limiting the current to 50 amps means you've be working with over 4300 volts. Designing an electrical recharging station that ordinary drivers can safely handle that kind of voltage/current (even in the rain or snow) certainly isn't impossible but isn't trivial, either.

Increase the construction of large nuclear power plants and streamline the approval process.

I agree, but the approval process has been streamlined, delays have been insured, and costs have been subsidized. DOE I also seem to recall reading that particular French reactor models (that have been approved and used in France) have been presumptively approved.

I still maintain that currently there isn't enough money in building new plants. That could change if electricity becomes a significant source of energy for transportation.

Coal is more abundant in America than any other energy resource.

If cars start charging up from the grid, then we'll have to start worrying about peak coal, whether it is between 2020 and 2030 or around 2032 A lot of the best coal and a lot of the coal that's easiest to get to is gone. Government subsidies for coal might be ill - advised (unlike the subsidies for nuclear energy).

[Dangling link fixed. NM]

What if these type of vehicles are powered by a Nanosolar array, both on the car, and on your house?

How possible is this? (I'm actually asking here, so forgive me for being naive.)

What if these type of vehicles are powered by a Nanosolar array, both on the car, and on your house?

How possible is this? (I'm actually asking here, so forgive me for being naive.)

It's a legitimate question but the answer isn't favorable. There simply isn't enough surface area on a car to hold enough solar cells to make a significant contribution to recharging the batteries. You could add a bit to the battery level but probably not enough to make it worthwhile. Likewise, I doubt there's enough area of most homes to do it, either. We're talking about a lot of watts to recharge an electric car.

However, one interesting idea I saw recently used solar cells on the roof of a car to circulate air through the car during the day. This kept the car much cooler and reduced the need for air conditioning fairly significantly. That would probably be more effective than trying to recharge the batteries.

(At the risk of a bit of topic digression)

Pretty much all of the 'nanosolar' approaches that I've seen are concentrating on cost (see HR's linked article) rather than performance. If you want the highest efficiency, you're talking good ol' crystalline Si, or some more exotic omni-wavelength technologies, and they cost.

Nothing wrong with either approach, both can improve the cost/performance ratio, but you're likely to see the nano-stuff turning up on things like building panels, rather than car roofs. There's just not enough area there.

I like the air circulation idea, though. Not only would it be a bonus to the A/C load in sunny climes, but some years ago a brother who was then working in auto parts manufacturing gave me a little lecture on the amount of damage done to interior components by the heat in a sealed cabin. That little feature might help durability and resale at the same time it saves a bit of energy.

1. The collectors need not be on the car, the nanosolar technolgy will be in the paint.
2. Within the next 5 to 10 years there will be a very rapid movement of development off the grid to locally produced power selling back to the grid.
3. The software here is a harbinger of a very raid worldwide boom in the Alternative Energy sector.

http://firstlook.3tiergroup.com/

4. Further Out,15 to 25 years, Corning, The Dept. of Energy, among others are looking at roads as being solar collectors. An Electrical Engineer has spoken in Washington to a DOE Conference about Solar Roadways. Present Highway systems will be replaced with 12 ft. modules that are large Photovoltaic collectors that will essentially plug into one another and form a nationwide solar grid. Corning is interested because the development of a glassine material to use as the road surface would be an enormously profitable breakthrough.

If this seems far/fetched to you, I would refer you to DDE's 1912 paper at West Point where he called for a nationwide system of military highways that would double as civilian thoroughfares. 40 years later, when he became President he initiated the Interstate Highway System.

We are about to see a change in energy sources not seen since the development of the Steam engine and we are going to see it happen faster than the computer revolution.

Why not think outside the box?

Simply seize the Saudi oil fields, pump them DRY, leave.

An object lesson (and one the Chinese would sign up for, they need cheap oil as much as we do).

This leaves the technical issues to be addressed down the road.

As a practical matter, air transportation will require oil, and cheap oil at that. Regardless of alternative oil technologies for cars.

It seems that the discussion above consensus is that battery tech is decades away. Same for nano-solar. Or hydrogen infrastructure. Or even hybrids (which impose complexity and weight penalties -- a Prius is less safe than a Dodge Charger due to weight/strength disparities).

If the problem is Saudi oil money funding terror, why not simply take the oil away from them and leave them poor and destitute as a lesson to everyone?

#11 from Jim Rockford at 1:45 am on Jan 08, 2008

James, Here is an opportunity not to be passed up. There is a writer's strike in Hollywood and the late night guys are dying for some writers for their monologues....

Larry J, Tim,

Thanks for the feedback. Had a slap my head "doh!" moment, when you guys pointed out the rather OBVIOUS fact, that cars are high performance, high energy machines - so of course, straight solar collection requires intensive high performance battery.

Appreciate you not rubbing my nose in what should have been obvious. (On the other hand, maybe I wasn't the only one with this stupid question, so I appreciate the education.)

Still, it would be incredibly cool if that WOULD be the case, right? Maybe some day. I'm sure if the nanosolar thing works out to it's potential, some portion of that energy could be collected (at the house) for recharge. Although it may be a small percentage.

At any rate, this whole think gets me deeply excited and optimistic, that we may finally be close to affordable, clean energy sources, that compete with coal, right out of the gate.

Meaning solar collection cleary CAN'T provide recharging for a high intensity thing like an engine.

Jim,

What a great thought. I can hardly wait! I'm sure no one else in the Middle East will mind. Everyone hates the Saudis anyway.

I hear those Muslims were getting tired of visiting Mecca and Medina, so let's blow those two places up while we're at it.

Say, why DID God put America's oil underneath the Muslim desert? Makes things difficult. Ah well, God moves in mysterious ways!

I remember years ago the stand-up comic Gallagher saying that the oil doesn't really belong to the Saudis, they just happen to be living on top of it. ZSo, he said, we should drill through from our side and take it from the bottom!

HR: FWIW, here are some rules of thumb I've found useful in this domain:

Energy applications (both generation and use) can be loosely divided into two classes: intensive and extensive. A car is an intensive energy use, as is most transportation. Solar generation is inherently extensive - the hard limit on incoming radiation flux means you need a large area, no matter how good your efficiency.

To combine intensive and extensive applications, you need one or both of: an accumulator or a physical network. An accumulator can be a battery, or an intermediate storage form such as hydrogen. If you build it right (as above) you can then take the accumulated energy back out in an intensive form.

We have a physical network - the grid - that allows intensive generation (e.g., a coal fired plant) in conjunction with both intensive (A/C) and extensive (low powered electronics) applications. But, since it's right now a one-way architecture, it doesn't yet allow us to use extensive generation to drive intensive uses.

Bottom line, if you want to make a total system improvements in an architecture involving solar generation, you need price/performance increments in all elements: solar generation, accumulator and/or network, and intensive usage efficiency. You're also going to need a huge amount of surface area, widely distributed, which is why the ideas about building panels and reusing roads make sense to pursue.

#17, Tim Oren

Even Hollywood writers undertand that point. Remember that a solar accumulator was the McGuffin of The Man With the Golden Gun, a Bond movie made in 1974.

This distinction is also the weakest part of ehtanol production. Growing the source organics for ethanol, no matter what source, is extensive. It's the accumulation phase that is itself energy intensive because harvesting the organics is a transportation problem.

My preferred energy policy has 3 major components:

1. Conservation to the extent practical. While conservation is unlikely to save enough energy to completely stop the rate of growth in consumption, lowering the rate of growth in energy consumption saves a tremendous amount of energy over time.

2. Alternative energy where practical and economical. Solar, wind, and other alternative sources aren't practical everywhere but each can help contribute to the energy supply within natural limits. None of the alternative energy sources are currently economically viable and all require subsidizies. We may decide that short term subsidizies to develop and implement the technology but none should last for more than a handful of years (

My preferred energy policy has 3 major components:

Strange, my post got chopped. Fortunately, I saved it.

3. Increase domestic energy production. We have a lot of energy available in the US but we keep putting a lot of it off limits with artificial restrictions. For example, Cuba is drilling for oil about 80 miles off of the Florida coast but American companies can't. Nuclear power is a great source of baseline power than can be augmented by alternative energy sources but we've had decades of fear mongering that makes it very difficult and expensive to explore this option.

High mileage cars and the like come under category of conservation. I'd love to own one but they have to make a vehicle that can drive in adverse weather conditions. As cool as the Apteria Typ-1e is, I doubt it would've allowed me to drive to work today (we had a few inches of snow last night) because it has a motor that drives the single rear wheel. If they used wheel hub motors for all three wheels and had perhaps a little more ground clearance, it likely would've made it just fine.

If top speeds are acceptable.... yeah.

That would be the sticking point for me, as well. I currently drive a gas/electric hybrid. I can put it in a gear that uses the battery exclusively, but effectively it turns the vehicle into a 4WD golf cart.

hypocrisy rules, try not to make it that obvious. As many have pointed out, it's not an accident that the Wahhabi entangled Sauds have a chokehold
on the world's oil supplies; it was a deliberate screw up. For starters, the Sauds and their fellow
Ilkwan retainers come from the Nejd in the deep interior of the country. The Holy Shrines of Mecca
and Medina were until 1922; under the guardianship
of the Hashemite clan; which rules the roost in Jordan. They are not perfect by any means, but they
did aid Allenby & Lawrence,& other functionaries of the Cairo branch of the Foreign Office; against
the Ottoman Turks. They were abandoned in favor of
St. John Philby's and Percy Cox's preferred Sauds
and their Wahhabi Ilkwan militiamen. Having conquered the country by 1929; after having tried
to annex Southern Iraq, they settled to imposing
the strictest form of Hambali sectarianism imaginable. The oil strike in 1938 preceded by the
concession agreements by representatives of So Cal
(future Chevron) and Philbt Sen. in 1932 led to
representatives of what would eventually ARAMCO; put them on their way. However, there's a tiny
detail left out of the agreements. The major oil
pipelines, refineries, offloading ports (Ab Quaiq,
Ras Tanura, and Yambu on the west coast are in predominantly Shia population clusters. Much like
Iraq; there's been a swindle here, to make "There
Will be Blood's Plainview (Doheny) blush in admiration.

... At 500mpg (because most of your power is really not coming from the gas), why bother with gas at all - go infinite mpg (all electric) and get a much simplified system.

... I've been reading about battery breakthroughs for decades. I'll believe it when I see it (an economical effective electric car battery). The theoretical energy storage of gasoline is 13kw per something. The best possible chemical battery is 3.5kw per the same something. The best actual batteries are less than 10% of that. So there's a long way to go. That said, the best for everyone would be a breakthrough in this area and electric cars.

... Regarding sunshine states... guess what... it gets real hot in Arizona, especially in a car (140 degrees is normal in a parked car in the summer). That means you need about 5 kilowatts of continuous air conditioning as long as you are in the car. That reduces somewhat the range of an electric vehicle.

... I suspect biofuels aren't going to cut it. We know that corn fructose ethanol is a pure scam with no net reduction in petroleum usage. Water requirements for energy production are enormous (I don't know if this is true with all fuels), as are land requirements. Perhaps genetically engineered plankton on large ocean areas would do the trick, but the environmentalists would fight that (it would clearly change the local ecology).

I'm puzzled as to why we'd want to waste the effort to invest in a hypothetically possible 500mpgcarwhen for a lot smaller investment or effort we could get rid of the 12mpg legacy cars and move to 30mpg vehicles - quickly, with no Manhattan Project technical breakthoughs.

Our Citroen C4TDi got 33 mpg flogging it on little roads with four people and massive amounts of luggage...

Simple is good, folks...

Diesel-electric. It works for subs, why not cars?

"Diesel-electric. It works for subs, why not cars?"

Who wants a quiet car that has to stop for air every couple of days? I want a big nuclear car that can run for 10 years without refueling.

Actually, a diesel-electric setup similar to that of d-e locomotives might be attractive. The diesel engine runs at max efficiency all the time, crankshafting into four big generators that send the juice to the traction motors that actually turn the wheels. Advantage: no need for a transmission, which would be a real problem for a diesel motor making 3,400 horsepower located on a train engine.

A different diesel, called the head-in motor, makes electricity to run the electrical systems on the rest of the train. It's a V-12 monster.

So what about a car that has four electrical motors, one at each wheel, getting power from a diesel engine under the hood that always runs at max efficiency for the electrical power required? Remember, even (well, especially) at idle, a diesel is a lot more economical than a gasoline engine.

This engine could be a two-stroke job, making it even more fuel efficient.

Simplicity advantage - no mechanical transmission, saving space and weight. Traction control could still be used for each wheel.

It's a thought, anyway.

AL #24:

I'm puzzled as to why we'd want to waste the effort to invest in a hypothetically possible 500mpgcarwhen for a lot smaller investment or effort we could get rid of the 12mpg legacy cars and move to 30mpg vehicles...

Help me understand why it's either/or. If we can get people to pony up for 30 mpg vehicles either voluntarily, perhaps with a bit of bribery, no problem. Just realize that when you say 'quickly' you are necessarily talking about turning over an 'installed base' that represents a large sunk investment for the average household. One in which the viable lifetime of the vehicles has been trending upward for some time, fact that has been built into expectations. Trying to get a large fraction of that base scrapped out quickly may be more politically difficult than you apparently think. Or we can just wait and let rising gas prices reduce its capital value anyway...

But the reason it could conceivably be relatively quick is the same reason that strategy also has its limits, even if viable: You can do it without pushing the technology edge. There's a virtue in setting up a goal in which real innovation has to occur for it to be achieved. There may also be a market - albeit initially a niche one - for the results. For sure things like the Tesla roadster or ultra-high mileage vehicles may only appeal to the affluent or those who happen to live in snow-free climates, but so what? Every unit you build pushes the technology further out the learning curve, towards where it's more affordable and practical for all. You're always for letting the rich pay for public goods - why is this way of achieving that end any worse than letting technology winners be declared by bureaucrats doling out tax money subsidies?

WB-7 First Plasma

The world has just changed. Cheap fusion is on the way. About 5 years.

The National Hydrogen Association is encouraged by the healthy debate to determine the best energy alternative. Each alternative energy solution has its own benefits and drawbacks. What sets hydrogen apart is it can improve our national security by reducing our dependence on foreign energy imports, and reduce carbon emissions improving our environmental outlook.

Hydrogen is not a new element for our nation’s companies – we have been producing and handling it for decades for use in agriculture, oil production, and even the food you eat (ever heard of the term “hydrogenated?” – take a look at a jar of peanut butter or the wrapper of a starburst). An initial $10 to $15 billion investment, equivalent to about one month of military spending in Iraq, would establish an initial refueling structure within 2 miles anywhere within the top 100 metro areas. More than 40 billion kg of hydrogen is produced globally each year, enough to fuel 130 million fuel cell vehicles. Furthermore, 53% of the hydrogen used in the U.S. is used to remove sulfur during the petroleum refining process each year.

Furthermore, hydrogen, as a fuel alternative, is the most environmentally-friendly when tapped in its purest form and generated from renewable resources. In fact, recently, two leading fuel cell manufacturing companies, Ballard Power Systems and Plug Power, released a joint report that confirms fuel cells can improve the environment. The report is readily available at Plug Power’s website at link.

[Rex, bare links are deprecated here at Winds. Also, ads are not our emphasis here, just so you know. Bare link corrected. --NM]

In 10 years we can get this nation majority nuclear powered, switch to electric/hybrids with great fuel efficiency, and replace foriegn fuels with domestic switchgrass based petrofuel (which will create a big new agricultural opportunity on land currently not in use). All that is do-able with current, or cusp technology. If we get the political will power to do it.

#30: Hydrogen is not an energy source. It is an intermediate accumulation and storage form for energy derived from other sources. Representing that it is a primary source, even by implication, is disingenuous and reflects poorly on any advocacy group doing so under its name. Hydrogen is no more or less carbon-friendly to the environment, or conducive to independence from foreign energy sources, than the ultimate energy source used to create it.

The decision ahead is whether to use electrons or protons (hydrogen, that is) as an intermediate energy storage form. The former requires substantial advances in battery technology and their wide deployment. The latter requires duplicating a distribution infrastructure that is already in place for electrons, as well as substantial advances in fuel cell technology. It might be better to focus on competitive advantage in that decision, rather than misrepresenting the benefits of hydrogen adoption.

Tim (#28) It depends on what problem we're trying to solve...if we want to quickly change the modal economy (and pollution impact) of the current fleet, I'd argue that we're better off with technically conservative, readily available and supportable tech, which will be cheaper and easier to push.

If we want to advance the state of the art, we keep pushing for breakthroughs.

The incompatibility comes when we talk about allocating the available pool of authority (government) and investment (government & private). I'd rather leave the breakthroughs to the private side (and let them reap the benefits) and use the available government leverage to push (using a combination of fuel price, regulatory shaping and subsidy) quicker fleet turnover to newer more efficient vehicles. As I've noted ad nauseum, it'd be easy to find 10 - 15% in fleet economy and that would have some impact on our national energy bill.

A.L.