Comments on: thoughts on the electric car

By: Chaim

Chaim — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 13:57:12 +0000

Battery memory per se is only a problem with older NiCad models. But lifetime and limited charge/discharge cycles are still issues. I think that ultimately we will need another form of liquid fuel. My favorite idea (though I've only seen it in Analog (the fact section!), so I can't really vouch for how feasible it is...) is to use renewable energy (eg solar) to make methanol from CO2 and water, creating a closed cycle that doesn't add any net carbon to the atmosphere.

By: Oren

Oren — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 05:47:28 +0000

I think the point of electric cars is that the gas->electricity conversion is fairly easy, even on a local level, whereas the electricity->gas conversion is basically impossible at any cost. Or equivalently, electricity has alternative sources (say, the sun) whereas gas does not.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 03:46:13 +0000

From the article, it is listing some pretty impressive MPG ratings after converting over to conventional fuel. I’ve not kept up with other hybrid performance, but how effective is it to run this thing on just gas?

By: Kevin

Kevin — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 03:23:47 +0000

I like the idea of electric cars better than hydrogen cars. Both would require a lot of infrastructure development to become widespread, but at least we already have power lines running all over the place. As for the minimum battery temperature, I’d wager that Volt 2.0 will have some sort of battery heater that runs off of a separate, less exotic battery, much like the oil heaters required by diesel engines in cold weather.

By: Ari

Ari — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 19:19:47 +0000

You also have a central point of failure – blackouts mean cars won’t work the next morning.

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Tue, 10 Mar 2009 19:18:16 +0000

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By: David

David — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 18:18:06 +0000

Re #5/6 – from an environmental point of view, I think plugins are great: it’s easier to change the O(n) sources of power to be less polluting than it is to change the O(n!) individual vehicles. This moves the problem to a place where scaling is a LOT better.