On Sun, May 25, 2008 at 05:33:15PM -0400, William Chops Westfield wrote:
> 
> On May 25, 2008, at 3:33 AM, Byron Jeff wrote:
> > I'm kind of surprised that with the surge in fuel costs that a
> > thread on
> > electric vehicles (EV) had not got jump started here.
> >
> [This part of the discussion moved to [OT]]

Thanks.

> The EV idea seems fundamentally flawed to me.  At best, it doesn't
> scale to being used by large numbers of people just because the
> electric grid isn't set up to handle that additional load.

We certainly can talk about infrastructure. The two key points about
electrical infrastructure is that it's both local and distributed.
Electricity can be generated almost anywhere without an inordinate amount
of infrastructure setup. The only reason that it hasn't been done is
because the cost of alternatives (solar, wind) is much most costly than
simply buying from the grid.

But there's nothing other than cost that's keeping these supplemental
electrical generation methods from coming online. As demand goes up, cost
will go up, and as cost go up, alternatives will come into play.

>  Worse,
> you may be making less efficient use of energy (lugging all that
> extra weigh around) that is only cheaper (if it IS cheaper) due to
> artificial and perhaps temporary pricing structures for electricity
> (being able to plug in your electric at work and charge it for free
> is well within [doesn't scale, artificial, and temporary], for example.

Considering that gas is only 25% efficient with the rest being waste heat.

This article points out tank to wheel efficiency of different types of
drive trains:

http://www.memagazine.org/mepower03/gauging/gauging.html

Batteries are nearly twice as efficient as gas engines.

> IMO, EVs were originally aimed at the pollution problem, where you
> could get significant improvements by replacing IC engines in dense
> (car-wise) urban environments.  They weren't, and aren't, very good
> at addressing an energy crisis.  (This of course assumes that we have
> an energy crisis rather than just a gasoline pricing problem.)

My current stance is that the severe dependence on oil in the US is a
threat to national security. Any tital shift of the infrastructure to
something that weans the country from that dependance is a good thing.

One avenue that looks really promising is the production of biodiesel from
growing oil rich algae. This site: http://www.oilgae.com outlines the
possibility. Here is a University of New Hampshire article:

http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html

That suggests that we can meet all of the US transportation fuel needs with
a mere 15000 sq. miles of land growing algae.

It also outlines at the bottom of the article of the efficiency of using
electric cars for transportation.

Gas prices are never coming back. With the severe demand in India and
China, coupled with instabilities in oil producing nations, the price is
only going to get worse.

So we need a new infrastructure, be it electric, biodiesel, or ethanol.

Right now as a early adopter, I'm choosing electric.

BAJ
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