Recent Comments:
Economist figures a tank of ethanol = food for a year {Autoblog Green}
Dec 10th 2007 7:22PM I don't know which is worse: if we burn the ethanol, it raises the price of high fructose corn syrup that is killing our kids (and everyone else, fo that matter) with runaway obesity and other diseases, but then it contributes to global warming and lung disease-- studies at Stanford show that ethanol use in fuels is particularly harmful to children's lungs.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070418072616.htm
Fuels are not needed to power vehicles anyway. The cheapest, most environmentally benign way to power cars is with electricity from solar panels, and that has suddenly become easier than ever to implement.
Nanosolar recently received the Innovation of the Year Award from Popular Science Magazine, and it is well-deserved. Their new, flexible, thin-film solar panels are not only as efficient as the best silicon cells that are so brittle and time-consuming to manufacture, but Nanosolar's PowerSheet solar panels are only a tenth the price, and can be rolled onto a roof like tar paper quickly and easily, covering an entire roof to produce far more energy than the much smaller, more expensive silicon panels that have been typical before now.
Coupled with appropriate storage batteries, a roof covered with PowerSheet could not only provide all the power the home would need, but could fully charge an EV as well. The best batteries for both the home's energy storage as well as the EV's batteries seems to be Altair's NanoSafe batteries.
Since the NanoSafe battery has an indefinitely long lifespan even in deep discharge applications, and can be discharged very rapidly without damage, it would be the perfect choice for powering EVs unless EEstor or another ultracapacitor manufacturer can do it cheaper.
With lots of small solar generation stations along major interstate routes, and power stored in stationary NanoSafe batteries, EVs could drive anywhere as easily as cars today that are powered with gasoline, but they would be able to do so far cheaper, and with no pollution or greenhouse gases.
Ethanol is NOT an answer: even if we used all farmland in the country to grow ethanol crops, it could not keep all our vehicles running and would still be a terribly pollution source.
Electric vehicles are all we need for quiet, efficient, powerful and clean ground transportation.
LA 2007 Preview: Are their really any new ideas? 1900 Porsche EV! {Autoblog Green}
Nov 15th 2007 1:33AM I hear lots of vigorous debate of the pros and cons of hub motors (HMs)... that they add too much unsprung weight, reducing controllability.
HM advocates point out that they free much space and reduce weight significantly-- no drive shaft tunnel, no transmission hump, no huge single motor hogging potential cargo space or limiting leg room. No differential, axles, brake master cylinders, brake boosters or other brake hardware either-- in fact, the only moving parts on such vehicles are the wheels themselves-- they don't even need brake disks or calipers.
Regardless of any objections, some of the very first mass-market EVs will use HMs, and if those first HM-powered car buyers like the form factor and no safety issues arise, it's a done deal-- there will be no turning back. HMs will be here to stay.
It's inevitable that HM tech will advance, making them ever smaller, lighter, more powerful and reliable. As they approach the weight of the brake disks and calipers they replace, there will be no reasonable argument against their use. Vehicles will never be built again with more than four moving parts-- the wheels.
Tesla's co-founder says all other electric car companies are wrong, make "crap" {Autoblog Green}
Oct 23rd 2007 9:47AM I had nothing but good thoughts and high hopes for the Tesla until they started trashing the competition... and Phoenix, Zap and others are only competition in the sense that they are trying to make EVs, not that they are in the same market segment... once Eberhard and Musk started the mud-slinging, they kinda lost me. Musk even had the moxie to totally dismiss other companies such as Paul MacCready's group that are trying to enter the private spacecraft race.
Mr. Eberhard's criticisms in many cases are not even valid: for instance, yes, Phoenix, Boshart, and others, for instance, don't have the money to engineer a really good vehicle from scratch, but they did it the smart way-- they worked out deals with Korean, Chinese or other existing car companies to provide skeleton "gliders" into which they install their electric drive trains, eliminating that huge expense.
In this creative way, they do what Eberhard thinks is not possible: produce a desirable EV for the mass market. True, cars over $40,000. are not usually thought of as entry-level vehicles, but the Phoenix is affordable to nearly anyone simply because the driver will be swapping huge gasoline expenses for large car payments. By dramatically reducing what they spend every week for travel expeneses, larger car payments are doable, and once the EV is paid off, there are no oil changes, tune-ups, valve jobs, transmission rebuilds, new mufflers, catalytic converters and other expenses to face. So buyers have a huge incentive for buying a more expensive car if they know it's a long-range investment.
Mr. Musk and Mr. Eberhard have been very critical of what they see as competition... no other EV makers have done that-- not Phoenix, Zap, Universal, Zenn or other has expressed anything but good wishes for any car company that shares the common goal of attacking the roots of global warming.
Mr. Eberhard and Mr. Musk do not realize how bad it makes them look to take the stances they have taken. I'll try to remind myself that they're both human, entitled to err, and that they're at least aspiring toward noble goals.
Thank you, Tesla, but cool it on the rhetoric please. The EV market is huge, and there is room enough for everyone.
More on green cars from The Union of Concerned Scientists {Autoblog Green}
May 18th 2007 5:11PM despite being happy overall with the Union of Concerned Scientists, I am disappointed with them over one thing: they have created a design they call the Vanguard, which is just another Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) Vehicle with lots of extra hardware to give it marginally better mileage but even more ways for it to break down.
When I have tried to initiate any dialog at UCS in an effort to support EVs instead, or at least give them equal support... EVs that only have one moving part, give far better mileage, produce no pollution at all and need far less maintenance... I get no response from anyone, not even an automated response. It makes me wonder what their real objectives are. I don't want to argue with them-- I simply want a reasonable agenda.
AVFI Show: ABG Video of the Phoenix SUT {Autoblog Green}
May 18th 2007 4:48PM To Susan, Daisy Garry and others with questions:
The car stops in 150 feet from 60 mph,
It will cost $45,000. as Sebastian mentioned.
This and more is available on the Phoenix website... www.phoenixmotorcars.com ... whenever you're online and you need to find anything, learn to use the Google seach engine, and in a heartbeat you'll usually find most anything you're after.
There is nothing on the Phoenix website, so far as I remember, about where the batteries are located, but they are in a beefy metal tray under the vehicle. They are in the drive shaft tunnel that runs down the middle of the body.
The carbon fiber drive shaft is, by the way, far lighter than the original drive shaft from the Korean manufacturer... it's just 5 lbs, as I remember, as savings of about 70 lbs., which is a weight savings for the life of the vehicle. The drive shaft is one of the best places to try to save weight, since a light drive shaft gives you faster acceleration; the motor needs to overcome less inertia every time it takes off, aside from being a lighter load overall.
Many others who have converted pickups to battery power have installed the batteries in the pickup bed, which is bad for two reasons: this not only takes up cargo space, but makes the truck more top-heavy and more prone to rollover.
The batteries on the Phoenix are in one of the lowest possible places on the vehicle, giving it a lower center of gravity and better stability in the event of quick lane changes as sometimes occur in emergencies. It can make the difference between a mere moment of panic and a serious accident.
I'm really impressed with the way the Phoenix has been engineered for use as an EV.
As for Mirko's comments, it's a very attractive EV in person, and if all you can do is complain about aesthetics in a blog about EVs, I hope your whole neighborhood suddenly becomes overpopulated with Hummers, Jeeps and Scions.
Miss Nevada Replaced {TMZ}
Dec 23rd 2006 9:20PM my god, what a hypocrite The Donsald is! How in the hell does that creep thtink he has any business challenging the ethics of Katie Rees and Rosie O'Donnel, especially since they didn't even do anything illegal, dethroning Rees despite the fact he had given Tara Conner a second chance and saying how "everyone deserves a second chance..." yet NOT giving Katie a second chance-- and it was Tara that was getting high on cocaine and other hard drugs?
Anybody thtat uses cocaine has heard how it's capable of taking complete control of you to thue point you'll steal, lie, betray even your closest friends and family... you are giving your money to our enemies, the very worst street criminals, so they can wreak ueven worse havoc on our lives-- Katie did no such thing. What she did was harmless... it appears to me The Donal is nothing more than a homophobe, and threatened by the very fact Katie could enjoy the pleasures of another female.
Rosie is not my favorte entertainer... but I would defend her to the death to live as she had... and despite what The Donal has said, she's witty, intuitive and fair. Kudos to Katie and Rosie... cooties to The Donald and Tara.
Speeding cars to power light poles {Autoblog Green}
Dec 4th 2006 5:07PM Puh-LEEEZE! No way! Tiny fans that are close enough to generate any power would be vulnerable to the same vandals that spray graffiti twenty feet up on the overhead signs that are supposedly protected by barbed wire and locks. Such silliness would be nothing more than a target for such lowlifes.
Also, such devices would only generate power when cars were passing by in the far inside and outside lanes... not in the center lanes... or when the wind was blowing in a direction that would cancel out the effect of the passing cars.
Such generators, to work at all, would have to be very tiny and delicate, and so therefore would require maintenance just to keep them running... this would put such maintenance workers at risk of the same drunk drivers that kill lots of workers and highway patrolmen every year. It would not be worth risking their lives, and what little we'd save on electricity we'd have to spend on repairmen and gasoline for their vehicles.
We don't need light just when cars are passing by, we need steady light so that we can still see what's 100 feet ahead of us when there's no traffic there. A far more practical idea would be to spend the same money to install solar lighting that would be far more reliable and less vulnerable.
Genetically engineered blood protein can split water into oxygen and hydrogen {Autoblog Green}
Dec 4th 2006 12:46PM I notice that Phoenix Motorcars does not appear in your list of car manufacturers-- it really deserves to be added. It is the only pure electric car available (unless you have $100,000. for a two-seat Tesla).
The Phoenix is using the breakthrough Altair nano-titanate battery that, if it delivers on its promise (the first Phoenix was assembled with the new battery on Friday) it will handle all of the probs associated with electrics.
It will have a range of 130 or 250 miles depending on choice of battery pack, can be fully recharged in 7-15 minutes (!!!), does not heat up when charging and discharging, will not explode even when deliberately abused or baked in an oven (Li ion batteries are dangerously volatile, judging from the half-billion dollars in Sony laptop recalls).
The nano-titanate battery is expected to last through tens of thousands of charge-discharge cycles (as opposed to Li ions, which will fail in as little as 750 charge cycles).
Phoenix is ramping up production on their electric cars as fast as possible, but even then only expects to have a few hundred built within the next year. I can't wait till I have my own.
I yearn for a day when even the heaviest highway traffic is unpolluted and nearly silent, when sitting in stalled traffic does not mean a long line of vehicles with their engines still idling, wasting fuel-- no smog stations, calalytic converters, no engines with thousands of temperamental parts (electrics have ONE moving part-- the motor, which just spins on its own center of gravity). Imagine the day when a car repair shop is just a place that does body work, and we can have a solar panel at home to recharge, so there are no gas stations, either. Utter simplicity.
Imagine a day soon when the biggest expense of driving is car insurance, and where none of your money goes to OPEC countries that hate us and use our money to destroy us and finance terrorism.
If you sit, as I did, and imagine how different our world would be if all cars were electric... how different our cars would be, no orange haze to spoil our cityscape... no sound pollution... being able to disconnect from the oil company's umbilical cord... that's a world worth wanting.
Twenty teams working towards 2007 Solar Decathlon {Autoblog Green}
Oct 30th 2006 12:35PM Following the parallel worlds of nanotechnology and alternative vehicles for many years-- starting with rotary engines, electric, fuel cell, hybrids and eventually resettling on the greatest promise available in electrics-- I have come to several conclusions: electric vehicles will be our future; plug-in hybrids will be the bridging technology to ubiquitous electrics; we will move from plug-in hybrids to pure battery-driven electrics, and, ultimately to ultracapacitor (UC) electrics.
The trucks and cars soon to be offered by Phoenix Motorcars with Altair battery tech will suredly be compared in coming years to the Model T; many competing technologies are soon to follow. But as good as these new batteries will be, UCs will be even better, as batteries have inherent lifespan limitations. UCs offer indefinitely long life and even quicker charging, which will be key to the demise of gasoline stations.
One of the beauties of electrics is that even if/when we develop UCs that make the best batteries obsolete, the battery-powered cars themselves will not be obsolete-- we will be able to upgrade our electric cars with each new breakthrough in electric storage.
The same nanotech that will finally make electrics viable will also make decentralized electric power possible... that is, carbon nanotubes and their kindred will make affordable home electric production possible, and we will be disconnecting from the power grid en masse. We will have the ability to power our cars without having to pay anyone for the privilege.
No gasoline credit card bills, no charges every few months from Jiffy Lube and others; no antifreeze polluting our bays and rivers, or poisoning our pets; no money going to the very same oil producing countries that finance terrorism; smog will be controllable.
