Electric cars

[John2189 452]

Why can’t electric cars generate their own electricity to charge its battery? 

[Rick3478 428]

Hybrids do.  A few of the plug-ins have an optional "range extender", which is a small I/C engine powering a generator that is integrated into the vehicle electronics.  And I suppose you could throw a Honda 2000EU in the "frunk".

[Pullstart 62,846]

2 hours ago, John2189 said:

Why can’t electric cars generate their own electricity to charge its battery? 

1- I am a gasser fan.

2- I believe some use brake energy to recharge batteries.

3- Don’t quote me on that!  

[Handy Don 12,217]

2 hours ago, John2189 said:

Why can’t electric cars generate their own electricity to charge its battery? 

Have you heard of perpetual motion machines?

A company in Europe is testing a set of coils embedded in the road that will charge an electric car as it passes over them. Early results are surprisingly promising!

[squonk 41,096]

58 minutes ago, Pullstart said:

1- I am a gasser fan.

2- I believe some use brake energy to recharge batteries.

3- Don’t quote me on that!  

Correct. And Locomotives have " Dynamic Braking" The motors generate so much electricity , it has to be dissipated in the form of heat. Like a giant toaster. And at night, it can be quite a dramatic event!

[ri702bill 8,318]

Not to get too "Po-lit-cal" but to me. the present (almost said "current"!!!) E--lectric cars are a joke. Cars have had onboard charging systems since the early 1910's  - over a HUNDRED years ago.. Why not now???????????????? Until they can develop a sufficient charge while driving all 4 seasons, under ALL conditions - these "vehicles" are not the LONG TERM answer....

[Ed Kennell 38,163]

3 hours ago, John2189 said:

Why can’t electric cars generate their own electricity to charge its battery? 

You could drive a generator with an electric motor that is powered by a battery.  Electric motors and generators are 85-90% efficient, so the generator would only be replacing around 75% of the energy being used by the motor.     No free lunch or charge with EVs.

[WHX?? 48,815]

2 hours ago, Pullstart said:

1- I am a gasser fan.

2- I believe some use brake energy to recharge batteries.

3- Don’t quote me on that!  

I will quote you on that Kev... Yes Cinnddaayy's Prius has regentive braking ... layman's terms the electric motors that are connected to the wheels turn into generators that charge batteries. 

Same principle as our SGs except controlled by computers. Anytime you lay off the throttle and it's moving. Guessing that explains the 70 mpg. 

Edited May 12, 2023 by WHX??

[wh500special 2,173]

EV’s and hybrids do generate electricity any time they are decelerating.  But it’s never enough to fully recharge the battery. 

 

If you helicoptered an electric car with a completely dead battery to the top of a mountain road and let it roll

down to the bottom while applying enough braking to use the regenerative system and not engage the friction brakes it will recover a great deal of energy and store it in the battery on its descent.  But if you then turned around and tried to drive back up to the top you wouldn’t make it all the way.  This discrepancy is thanks to mechanical frictional energy losses, aerodynamic drag, and inefficiencies of the electrical system. 
 

We would attribute those - and other - losses to the first and second laws of thermodynamics.  The first deals with work being done to the system (braking force applied over the length of the descent) while the second it the “you don’t get something for nothing” law of science. 
 

in an engine-driven car ALL of the energy gained by the car as it’s hoisted up the same mountain will be wasted on the descent since there is no recovery mechanism available.  You’d have to find a way to suck the Carbon, Oxygen, and Hydrogen out of the air surrounding  the car and react it back into a hydrocarbon like gasoline or diesel oil.  This process may be possible, but it certainly wouldn’t be efficient and likely could never be done on a scale that would be beneficial.  It took the earth millions of years to use sunlight and chemistry to form those oil deposits in the ground using this sort of mechanism. 

 

Instead the energy stored in the car at the top of the hill will either be burned off by heating the brakes through friction or will be used to compress and expel air in the engine during compression braking.  Both of these are effectively friction braking and waste 100% of the energy we used to get the car to the top of the mountain in the first place. 

 

The same principle applies to a hybrid car, but the battery is much, much smaller than on a straight EV. In many cases of prolonged deceleration such as descending our mountain, the car will actually use the electric motor to spin the non-firing engine to dissipate excess energy to help bleed off speed from the car.  So net energy recovery in a hybrid will be much less. 
 

The same effects are at play when slowing down on flat pavement.  Here we may not have the potential energy (energy pent up in the car due to elevation changes) to recover but we do have kinetic energy (energy the car has because it is moving). 
 

I don’t know what the overall efficiency of dynamic braking is, but I can’t imagine it being over 50% and it probably varies wildly depending on driving style. But we can be sure in a regular car that it’s all wasted all the time. 

Ed’s example is a great example.  You’d see the same kind of losses if you hooked up a DC to AC inverter to your car battery then connected a battery charger between the output of the inverter and the battery.  At some point the battery will eventually die as the inefficiency of the electrical devices turns to heat and warms them

up. 

 

You never get back all the energy you pump into a system.  Never.  It’s the classic perpetual motion machine conundrum. But electric cars do a pretty good job recovering energy when they slow down, especially compared to engine drive cars. 
 

Steve

Edited May 12, 2023 by wh500special

[Achto 27,570]

5 hours ago, John2189 said:

Why can’t electric cars generate their own electricity to charge its battery? 

 

There is no current technology available that will generate more energy than it takes to produce said energy.

 

All electric cars use regenerative braking to help recharge the batteries. The batteries there fore will last longer in stop & go traffic than they will cruising at highway speeds. 

 

Like most things that man has engineered, I believe that the electric car technology is being pushed too far too fast. At one time Compact Florescent Bulbs were the answer to saving energy and were helping to deplete pollution caused by making electricity. Then Guess what??? The pollution caused by disposing of CFL's was worse than the pollution/energy they were saving.    

 

Today electric cars are supposed to be a major cure for our pollution problems. We know not what pollution problems that they will offer in the future. Example - What damage will the disposal of batteries cause??

 

In my opinion electric cars are not reducing pollution, they are only moving it to a different location. Lets remember that about 60% of our electricity is still produced by fossil fuels.

Edited May 12, 2023 by Achto

[wh500special 2,173]

14 hours ago, ri702bill said:

…the present (almost said "current"!!!) E--lectric cars are a joke…

I don’t think they are a joke, but I do appreciate the pun. 
 

EV’s have many benefits and offer improved overall operational efficiencies compared to conventional cars. They certainly have limitations and do not fit every need and application though.  
 

I’m not a technophile, a greenie, a lemming, or a sheep.  I’m actually quite the skeptic and used to have the troglodyte attitude that electric cars are stupid.  They’re slow, they take forever to charge, they have limited range, they aren’t any better than a gas car in efficiency, they use too many precious elements, won’t somebody think of the children, etc.  But the more I’ve read about them, the more I’ve considered them, and the more I’ve realized that they can be a viable solution I’ve come around to thinking they can make a lot of sense for a lot of people a lot of the time. 
 

I think I’m pretty average:  My commute is 30 miles one way. I go to work 5-6 days a week. Once in a while I might have something else planned that changes my driving pattern but my life is pretty predictable as are, I suspect, the lives of most people. 
 

My current truck is averaging a real (hand calculated by dividing the number of miles

i drive by the gallons of gas I pump into the tank and not relying on the trip

computer) 25 mpg. That means in my 300 mile week I use 12 gallons of gas to drive back and forth to work.  At almost $4 a gallon this is the epitome of a bad choice in vehicles if economics mean anything. 
 

But let’s pretend instead of driving a machismo monster truck (that I “need” for pulling the boat and schlepping tractors) that I was driving a reasonable car like a Honda Accord. I’d be getting over 30 mpg.  So now let’s estimate I’m burning ten gallons a week and saving about $10 ($40 vs $50). 

 

For an Accord-sized electric car like a Tesla 3, the same 300 mile loop ought to be done with about 100 kW-hr of electricity. For me, that’s about $11 at my electric rates, but I can round up to $15 to be conservative.  That’s $15 vs $40 or a $1300 a year savings over an already parsimonious car. That’s significant.
 

The other obvious benefit is I’d never have to stop at a gas station in a bad neighborhood or step in somebody’s chewing tobacco juice or ashtray dumpings littered around the gas pump like I encountered today. 
 

But, wait a minute. What about those days where i have to visit a supplier or a customer or pick up my daughter from her school on the other side of the city or go fishing 50 miles from home?  No big deal, the car has a range of about 300 miles and I plug in every night to the outlet in my garage  to recover the 60 miles of energy I used that day.   I could almost do

this on the slowest of the slowest 120v chargers but would install The 240v to boost the charge rate. 
 

In the odd chance i have to make an emergency cross country trip it’s likely I’ll run into some kind of inconvenience or problem.  But that’s 1% of my driving.  
 

But what about the materials used to make the batteries or manufacture the car?  And what happens to those batteries at the end of their life? What about the coal that’s burned to fuel the trip?  Or the fact that the grid isn’t up to the task?  Or that wintertime is a range killer?

 

All excellent points.  But these comparisons usually are presented non-objectively or from different baselines making meaningful conclusions hard to draw.   The bottom line, however, is that all cars come at a significant environmental

cost to build and operate, batteries are lasting longer than expected and are so valuable that recycling is a certainty, converting fossil fuels to useful energy is at best 35% efficient whether it happens in under your hood or at a power plant and is a long term fool's errand, the grid needs to be beefed up and needs to be able to both charge and pull power from connected car (and other) batteries, and that wintertime range worries are real but can be managed in most instances. 

 

One of the things that strikes me is that if we had become accustomed to driving electric cars over the last many decades and the new technology of gasoline and diesel power was proposed today, I doubt many reasonable people would bite on it. Who would want to drive around in a noisy, slow, inefficient, flammable liquid-filled death trap? Who would want to have to stop every few hundred miles and stand there in the cold and wind while pumping hazardous chemicals into the car?  Wouldn’t it be easier to just plug the thing in whenever it’s parked and let it pull and push electricity as needed?
 

All of that said, EV’s don’t make sense for every person in every situation all of the time.  But that doesn’t mean eventually these gaps can’t be filled in. 
 

Towing large, non-aerodynamic loads is a range killer whether you’re burning fuel under the hood or swilling electrons. Not the best application for an EV.  Cross country operation in cold, remote regions is better suited to combustion engines.  Off roading over long distances in an EV?  Good luck.  
 

These and other outliers and heavy duty applications may be better suited to PHEV’s, Hydrogen, or traditional gas engines but so much of our normal driving is easily accommodated electrically.  I still think PHEV’s are the most sensible consumer solution and really could work for just about every duty cycle, but EV’s have their place. 

 

I came soooooo close to ordering the F150 Lightning when it was unveiled.  The base model was perfect for me.  A 4-door, 4wd, full size electric pickup for $39999.  I didn’t even want any options - base model all the way.

For 99% of what i do the range would be adequate and I could charge nightly at home.  The deal breaker?  Range when towing wouldn’t let me get to my favorite boat ramp and back home without a recharge somewhere.  That 1% contingency made all the difference.  
 

I suspect my next truck will be electric.  My wife is ambivalent but the idea of no longer visiting gas stations really speaks to her. 

 

I think we are so close to this working.  

 

But for those who aren’t convinced, don’t worry.  There are about 300 million vehicles on the road in the US. It’s gonna be a long time before we see the demise of the internal combustion engine and the gas station.  Even with incentives and prodding, the changeover is a long way out and there will be a lot of time for industry and the grid to catch up.  It’s possible that something better may come along in the interim but the way I see it, electric vehicles really can be a a sensible solution for most mainstream uses. 
 

Steve

Edited May 12, 2023 by wh500special

[lynnmor 7,305]

If only the owners of EV's would pay their own way.  Enough with the handouts and no highway funds.

[Achto 27,570]

3 hours ago, lynnmor said:

If only the owners of EV's would pay their own way.  Enough with the handouts and no highway funds.

 

Wisconsin gets their highway fund supplement for EV's through vehicle registration.

Auto registration in Wisconsin is $85 per year for a gas or diesel car.

Add another $75 per year if you drive a hybrid. 

Add yet another $100 per year if you drive an EV.

 

Our truck registration is based on the gross weight of the vehicle. Plus the extra surcharges if they are Hybrid or EV.

[SylvanLakeWH 25,552]

35 minutes ago, Achto said:

 

Wisconsin gets their highway fund supplement for EV's through vehicle registration.

Auto registration in Wisconsin is $85 per year for a gas or diesel car.

Add another $75 per year if you drive a hybrid. 

Add yet another $100 per year if you drive an EV.

 

Our truck registration is based on the gross weight of the vehicle. Plus the extra surcharges if they are Hybrid or EV.

Similar to Michigan... but our amounts are higher... reflected in our far worse roads 

 

And... don't forget we all subsidize our roads through the gas tax when we fuel up our 's (except those few who are farmers and have ag tanks)... 

 

On the overall topic - pretty simple: there are no free rides. 

 

I have 3 electric 's. they are very impressive but, they are not "green" (pardon the pun).

[Ed Kennell 38,163]

Steve @wh500special has given us great info on the pos and negs of EVs.       

Delivery of energy to the consumer thru a wire is probably better for the environment than by tankers and pipelines.

The key that seems to be forgotten is how do we produce this electrical energy?   

 

[John2189 452]

I’m not for or against electric vehicles. Im sure they have their place. I am going to be 70, so im sure I will never own one. 

[Ed Kennell 38,163]

26 minutes ago, John2189 said:

I’m not for or against electric vehicles. Im sure they have their place. I am going to be 70, so im sure I will never own one. 

Same here for this 79yo.     I only hope the current E only phase doesn't turn out to be a fiasco like the ethanol phase  that actually used more oil and did more harm to our star.

 

Ethanol....can anyone explain this.

Yesterday I bought 4 gallon of 100% gasoline for my tractors.      price was $4.659 / gallon.

That = $4.19 for 0.9 gallons.  If I add  0.1 gallon of ethanol to that , the price is now $3.659 / gallon for 10% ethanol.   

 

Is this some kind of "new math" .    

 

Another strange ethanol item.     When the 10% ethanol phase started a few years ago, it was advertised as a 10% ethanol lead free fuel.    I guess to help convince uninformed consumers that any other gasoline contained the dreaded lead.   When in fact all leaded gasoline was phased out in 1973.

Edited May 12, 2023 by Ed Kennell

[Rick3478 428]

Here's another question:  Why don't they all have solar panels?  On the roof at least, but hood, trunk and "frunk" would be good places, too?

[953 nut 55,211]

13 hours ago, Handy Don said:

Have you heard of perpetual motion machines?

A company in Europe is testing a set of coils embedded in the road that will charge an electric car as it passes over them. Early results are surprisingly promising!

      With the amount of titanium rods I have in my body I would probably be able to levitate across the road.      

 

The bureaucrats that are pushing the EV program need to be introduced to the real world. Our military fleet of a quarter million light and medium duty non-combat vehicles is mandated to be all electric within the next decade. It is reasonable to presume that these vehicles would be replaced with new replacement vehicles anyway but the transition from conventional vehicles to EVs will have some additional costs. No consideration is given to the amount of electrical generation or grid infrastructure will be required. Since the US government is going to be the customer it may cost a bit more than the $ 40-K Ford Lightning, actually a whole bunch more.

Not to be outdone by the military the Postal service will be going electric. The USPS announced an initial $482 million contract for Oshkosh Corp. for 50,000 EV Postal trucks and said it could order up to 165,000 vehicles over 10 years in a deal that could be worth $6 billion or more. USPS estimates its total costs for buying and operating 75,000 new delivery vehicles over 20 years including fueling and maintenance at $9.3 billion for gasoline-powered vehicles compared with $11.6 billion for electric models.

Sooooooooooooooo, if it will cost $ 2.3 Billion more to operate 75,000 EVs and they anticipate buying 215,000 EVs then my guess is the price of postage MIGHT go up.

22 minutes ago, John2189 said:

I’m not for or against electric vehicles. Im sure they have their place. I am going to be 70, so im sure I will never own one. 

 

My wife and I tend to keep our vehicles for 200-K miles or longer and have no plans to replace the ones we have in the near future. As we are approaching our eighth decade on earth and we drive less now than during our younger years we too will not become a part of the EV generation. When we travel to visit family or attend the"BIG SHOW" the trips are well over 400 miles and that would necessitate a lengthy stop or two to recharge the battery, not my idea of fun. 

Will the EV transition drive the price of gas up, you can count on it! Economic theory would suggest that reduced demand would have the price of gas come down but the bureaucrats that are pushing EVs will see to it that the price will go up and availability will be reduced as a result.           

4 minutes ago, Rick3478 said:

Here's another question:  Why don't they all have solar panels?  On the roof at least, but hood, trunk and "frunk" would be good places, too?

Funny you should ask that, here I sit on a cloudy rainy day, guess I couldn't go far on solar power today.

[oliver2-44 9,743]

You’ve all see the giant gas station that have 50 or more gas pumps. Think about an electric Fast charging station with that many chargers. It would need a high voltage power line directly to it and it’s own substation. Currently it takes less than 5 minutes to fill a vehicle with gas. Fast chargers 15 to 30 minutes. Imagine the lines at those fast charging fuel stations. 
I recently read some utility PhD experts report that to support the current bureaucrats schedule for transition to electric cars would mean the electric utility infrastructure (power lines, substation, power plants, etc) would need to double in that same time frame. Can you imagine the cost to replace the wires down every city street, country road, etc with larger ones in the next 20-30?years. Larger wires need larger poles and on and on.  

Edited May 12, 2023 by oliver2-44

[lynnmor 7,305]

3 minutes ago, oliver2-44 said:

 Can you imagine the cost to replace the wires down every city street, country road, etc with larger ones in the next 20-30?years. Larger wires need larger poles and on and on.  

 

Of course you will need larger electric chainsaws to cut down the larger trees to make the larger poles. 

[wh500special 2,173]

29 minutes ago, Rick3478 said:

Here's another question:  Why don't they all have solar panels?  On the roof at least, but hood, trunk and "frunk" would be good places, too?

 

 

The math explaining why we're not seeing solar panels on cars is very straightforward.

 

Best case, you get about 1000 W/m2 of incident solar radiation at high noon on a cloudless day.  On the highway, an electric car can consume power at around 20 kW (that's only about 26 hp by the way).  To offset that power consumption rate you'd need about 215 square feet of solar panel on top of your car assuming no efficiency losses.  The footprint of this car is only about 93 square feet and a lot of that needs to be windows so you can see where you're going.   Some surfaces of the car need to be sloped, so those won't point directly at the sun.  Add a few clouds or have the sun anywhere other than directly overhead and the power drops off significantly.  You should be able to see where this is going...

 

There just isn't enough solar radiation falling on top of a conventionally-sized and configured car to make much of a difference, so manufactures aren't saddling the car with the cost of panels.

 

I think Toyota does offer panels on top of one of their models, but it mostly serves to trickle a bit of power into the battery when parked and condition the interior.

 

Steve

 

 

 

 

 

 

[lynnmor 7,305]

52 minutes ago, Ed Kennell said:

Another strange ethanol item.     When the 10% ethanol phase started a few years ago, it was advertised as a 10% ethanol lead free fuel.    I guess to help convince uninformed consumers that any other gasoline contained the dreaded lead.   When in fact all leaded gasoline was phased out in 1973.

 

The fact that regular gasoline is labeled unleaded is just nonsense.

 

Since ethanol will provide reduced fuel mileage, pushing it on a unsuspecting public provides an increased tax windfall, so don't expect the ethanol mandate to end anytime soon.

[Wheel Horse 3D 3,795]

Here's some fun info from a DOT regulated standpoint. A company pays road taxes based on mileage drvien in each state.They then get credits applied for each gallon of fuel purchased to drive those miles.(IFTA). There is absolutely no incentive for companies to reduce their fuel usage from a tax standpoint, Getting a more efficient vehicle actually ends up costing more in road taxes. Now they are starting to inflate costs of licensing and taxes to merely drive a hybrid or electric vehicle, plus costs of battery replacement etc. they really make it difficult from a dot and licensing standpoint to justify fuel efficient or electric vehicles even if they did make sense in a use case! There may be a very few cases where the fuel reduction would reduce overall operational and maintenance costs enough to justify a cchange, but from the tax side...nope!(Unless your company happens to be properly positioned and connected to receive crazy subsidies)

[sergeant 291]

30 minutes ago, 953 nut said:

      With the amount of titanium rods I have in my body I would probably be able to levitate across the road.      

 

The bureaucrats that are pushing the EV program need to be introduced to the real world. Our military fleet of a quarter million light and medium duty non-combat vehicles is mandated to be all electric within the next decade. It is reasonable to presume that these vehicles would be replaced with new replacement vehicles anyway but the transition from conventional vehicles t        

 

The next Presidential administration will stop that if they are from the other Party. The current administration wants that applied to combat Vehicles as well. But Until The Bear and Dragon go EV, That would represent a danger to the United States to Have combat Vehicles that our Electric! Wait, stop the Battle we have to go re-charge our Tanks, Helicopters and anti-aircraft Platform vehicles. Bad enough the Light Infantry today carries more Batteries than bullets since about 1998 Reflective sight, Pac4(night Vision Laser for Marking Targets)  Night Vision, CLU (Command Launch Unit) for Javelin anti-Tank Missiles &  Radios.

 

Even Europe Now realizes the Push for EV at least in the Next 50 Years Is Unobtainable, They are pushing for other no or Lower Carbon fuels when Used In a Vehicle Now instead of EV. The downside is to produce some of those fuels, it's a pretty dirty Process right now. Their Push is For Hydrogen Instead of Natural Gas for Heating and cooking, But They Now have erased the Great EV Push because of the Lack Of Infrastructure for EV. I think You are Going to see More Hybrid Vehicles In the next 10 years more than EV Because the US is so Vast were Not going to be anywhere Near the Current US administration's Idea of 2030 Maybe 2060 when I am 96 I think currently the estimate to Produce 1 EV roadworthy Vehicles Batteries right now would put the same amount of Carbon into the atmosphere That would Take Car running 8 years on 87 octane Gasoline to Produce. A Company In Israel called Aquarius Just developed a Muti-Fuel engine, 800 miles On 1 Tank of fuel, and it generates electric to run generators in a vehicle