The real problem with electric cars is that they don't make vroom vroom noises. Hybrids are the future, the only variable is fuel source.
That straight electric vehicle may not be as green as you think. What do we do with voluminous quantities of spent batteries if/when the majority of vehicles are made this way? And if your vehicle's electric supply is coming of any number of America's laughable "clean coal" generating stations...
No, I think what's needed is a very efficient, constant velicity, internal combustion engine with electric hybrid drive.
I'm surprised that we don't yet have a small high-RPM turbo diesel-electric hybrid mated to a CVT. Keeping the RPM relatively constant should overcome the idle, stop and go, problems some diesels have, together with an electric for tourque where needed, and voila. It could be something closer to a diesel electric train in concept, where the engine is running all the time as a generator for the electric motor. Current hybrids drive off of both power sources. This would too, but by making the diesel very small, it could be smooth and frugal, and run at a higher constant RPM -- where appropriate, steady state cruise for instance, the CVT could take care of the gearing and bypass the electric entirely. Or, in the case of stop and go, the engine would be sized just right to be a very efficient generator. Current hybrid IC engines have too much displacement, this would have to be almost a small turbine -- largely bypassing the need for heavy, expensive, and environmentally hazardous batteries.
Low sulfur diesel today.
Biodiesls and ethanol tomorrow,
Hydrogen in 20 years...
The way I figure, a small, 400-660cc diesel/electric in the arrangement I described, should power a compact 4 seat car into the 135-145MPG range based on existing technology, and it could be mass produced for less than $30K.
Im guessing that in electric vehicles, the motor is pretty much attached directly to the wheels.
Wouldn't it be better to have a conventional gear system in these things so that the electric motor is always doing low revs? Wouldn't that save alot of electricity, and extend the range somewhat?
I'll be brief: for motors, the energy-in is nearly directly related to the energy out. Revs don't relate so much to this unless the gearing remains constant.
There has to be flux for electromagnetic radiation to occur. DC has no flux, but quite often DC power systems are modulated with on-off circuitry, and this results in flux. The nature of DC power switching actually creates a lot of noise.
I suggest you review Ampere's law before making such bold statements. Maybe you could tell us what exactly it says. This could be useful for the purposes of this discussion.
Quote:
I suspect that the car uses AC because the literature suggests that it has a three-phase induction motor. I would also be extremely tasteless to call any kind of DC product a "Tesla."...
If you look at the torque curve that they claim, you will notice that it is very characteristic of DC motor, not AC motor. Torque curve of an AC motor looks very different.
The advantage of using a DC motor is that you don't have an ultra high current DC/AC converter... a rather inefficient device that needs a dedicated cooling loop.
That straight electric vehicle may not be as green as you think. What do we do with voluminous quantities of spent batteries if/when the majority of vehicles are made this way? And if your vehicle's electric supply is coming of any number of America's laughable "clean coal" generating stations...
You obviously didn't do the FAQs.
Quote:
Are there any toxic chemicals in the battery?
All Lithium Ion batteries are classified by the federal government as non-hazardous waste and are safe for disposal in the normal municipal waste stream. These batteries, however, do contain recyclable materials that make recycling a good idea
Sounds to me like an opportunity for companies to recycle or recondition them. Plus, I'm sure there's companies working on making these things very environmentally friendly.
Your vehicle's electricity may be coming from your own energy producing home.
I suggest you review Ampere's law before making such bold statements. Maybe you could tell us what exactly it says. This could be useful for the purposes of this discussion.
If you look at the torque curve that they claim, you will notice that it is very characteristic of DC motor, not AC motor. Torque curve of an AC motor looks very different.
The advantage of using a DC motor is that you don't have an ultra high current DC/AC converter... a rather inefficient device that needs a dedicated cooling loop.
I'm not trying to claim that one way is better than the other, but on the telsa motors website it explicitly states that the motor is a three-phase motor. If there's such thing as a three-phase DC motor, it would be the first time I've heard of it.
I'm still sure that this would be a better car as a hybrid than a battery powered electric, especially if the thing has 1700lbs worth of batteries on board. That weighs more than even the baddest 1970's musclecar engines, what am I writing? It weighs more than entire drivetrains.
A 660cc motorcycle type engine weighs less than 100lbs. It would be hard to build a gas engine/generator, CVT and gas tank combination that weighed more than 500, saving at least 1200lbs in the process.
I'll be brief: for motors, the energy-in is nearly directly related to the energy out. Revs don't relate so much to this unless the gearing remains constant.
thats a shame, i was imagining an expanding drive gear system - you know, a belt driven thing where the drive cog actually expands in size to alter the ratio of input and output gears. As you accelerate, the drive cog expands from 1:1, to maybe 4:1 or something, and the revs on the torquey motor remain constant, say 1000rpm to achieve the same effect as going from 1000rpm to 4000 rpm at the motor.
I would have thought, that given the amount of torgue, turning an expanding drive cog wouldn't be so hard?
I'm still sure that this would be a better car as a hybrid than a battery powered electric, especially if the thing has 1700lbs worth of batteries on board. That weighs more than even the baddest 1970's musclecar engines, what am I writing? It weighs more than entire drivetrains.
A 660cc motorcycle type engine weighs less than 100lbs. It would be hard to build a gas engine/generator, CVT and gas tank combination that weighed more than 500, saving at least 1200lbs in the process.
we really need to scale down the ITER project into an engine size. It will happen one day!
I'm not trying to claim that one way is better than the other, but on the telsa motors website it explicitly states that the motor is a three-phase motor. If there's such thing as a three-phase DC motor, it would be the first time I've heard of it.
Hmmm....
V(t) = Sin (wt + PHI) ... where omega ( w ) is zero for Direct Current...
...three phase...
...\ ...
... phases with no phase...
...conjugate of the phase...
Step funtions?
...well, someone might have invented it, or be about to invent it, but it ain't gonna be me!
This stuff is pretty cool. Here's another electric car you guys might wanna check out. In the video, this little car destroys a Porsche Carrera GT and a Ferrari Modena. It's still just a "proof of concept" car as of now. Hope the topic starter doesn't mind me adding another car(prototype) to the topic.
As I mentioned earlier, Wright used to work at Tesla Motors. Seems that we have a little "friendly" competition going between them which is great. Of course, if I wasn't a neogreen and my ego needed a Ferrari or a Carrera GT....damn, those engines sound sweet. Nothing like the sound of a Ferrari engine.
Interesting, I never thought about the possible EMF issue of electric cars. I'm glad it's not likely to be an issue with this car. And yes I want one too! 1 cents a mile! They did mention that they will have a solar option for it so it's all green energy and could even have extra energy produced that could be used as a power generator. The first Silicon Valley car.
They are saying that the batteries will have a life of 500 charge/dis-charge cycles. Their estimate is 100K miles. I wonder how much it will cost to replace those batteries?
Comments
That straight electric vehicle may not be as green as you think. What do we do with voluminous quantities of spent batteries if/when the majority of vehicles are made this way? And if your vehicle's electric supply is coming of any number of America's laughable "clean coal" generating stations...
No, I think what's needed is a very efficient, constant velicity, internal combustion engine with electric hybrid drive.
I'm surprised that we don't yet have a small high-RPM turbo diesel-electric hybrid mated to a CVT. Keeping the RPM relatively constant should overcome the idle, stop and go, problems some diesels have, together with an electric for tourque where needed, and voila. It could be something closer to a diesel electric train in concept, where the engine is running all the time as a generator for the electric motor. Current hybrids drive off of both power sources. This would too, but by making the diesel very small, it could be smooth and frugal, and run at a higher constant RPM -- where appropriate, steady state cruise for instance, the CVT could take care of the gearing and bypass the electric entirely. Or, in the case of stop and go, the engine would be sized just right to be a very efficient generator. Current hybrid IC engines have too much displacement, this would have to be almost a small turbine -- largely bypassing the need for heavy, expensive, and environmentally hazardous batteries.
Low sulfur diesel today.
Biodiesls and ethanol tomorrow,
Hydrogen in 20 years...
The way I figure, a small, 400-660cc diesel/electric in the arrangement I described, should power a compact 4 seat car into the 135-145MPG range based on existing technology, and it could be mass produced for less than $30K.
Originally posted by MarcUK
Im guessing that in electric vehicles, the motor is pretty much attached directly to the wheels.
Wouldn't it be better to have a conventional gear system in these things so that the electric motor is always doing low revs? Wouldn't that save alot of electricity, and extend the range somewhat?
I'll be brief: for motors, the energy-in is nearly directly related to the energy out. Revs don't relate so much to this unless the gearing remains constant.
Originally posted by e1618978
The torque isn't actually that high - my Volvo wagon has 295 foot pounds, almost twice as much, and my car is 0-60 in 5.6 seconds.
With 1700 lbs of batteries, it has to be about the same weight as my wagon, too.
I wonder how they are getting the performance?
Maybe it doesn't have a transmission? Or the regularity of the torque allows for faster shifts?
Originally posted by Splinemodel
There has to be flux for electromagnetic radiation to occur. DC has no flux, but quite often DC power systems are modulated with on-off circuitry, and this results in flux. The nature of DC power switching actually creates a lot of noise.
I suggest you review Ampere's law before making such bold statements. Maybe you could tell us what exactly it says. This could be useful for the purposes of this discussion.
I suspect that the car uses AC because the literature suggests that it has a three-phase induction motor. I would also be extremely tasteless to call any kind of DC product a "Tesla."...
If you look at the torque curve that they claim, you will notice that it is very characteristic of DC motor, not AC motor. Torque curve of an AC motor looks very different.
The advantage of using a DC motor is that you don't have an ultra high current DC/AC converter... a rather inefficient device that needs a dedicated cooling loop.
Originally posted by Matsu
That straight electric vehicle may not be as green as you think. What do we do with voluminous quantities of spent batteries if/when the majority of vehicles are made this way? And if your vehicle's electric supply is coming of any number of America's laughable "clean coal" generating stations...
You obviously didn't do the FAQs.
Are there any toxic chemicals in the battery?
All Lithium Ion batteries are classified by the federal government as non-hazardous waste and are safe for disposal in the normal municipal waste stream. These batteries, however, do contain recyclable materials that make recycling a good idea
Sounds to me like an opportunity for companies to recycle or recondition them. Plus, I'm sure there's companies working on making these things very environmentally friendly.
Your vehicle's electricity may be coming from your own energy producing home.
Originally posted by skatman
I suggest you review Ampere's law before making such bold statements. Maybe you could tell us what exactly it says. This could be useful for the purposes of this discussion.
If you look at the torque curve that they claim, you will notice that it is very characteristic of DC motor, not AC motor. Torque curve of an AC motor looks very different.
The advantage of using a DC motor is that you don't have an ultra high current DC/AC converter... a rather inefficient device that needs a dedicated cooling loop.
I'm not trying to claim that one way is better than the other, but on the telsa motors website it explicitly states that the motor is a three-phase motor. If there's such thing as a three-phase DC motor, it would be the first time I've heard of it.
A 660cc motorcycle type engine weighs less than 100lbs. It would be hard to build a gas engine/generator, CVT and gas tank combination that weighed more than 500, saving at least 1200lbs in the process.
Originally posted by Splinemodel
I'll be brief: for motors, the energy-in is nearly directly related to the energy out. Revs don't relate so much to this unless the gearing remains constant.
thats a shame, i was imagining an expanding drive gear system - you know, a belt driven thing where the drive cog actually expands in size to alter the ratio of input and output gears. As you accelerate, the drive cog expands from 1:1, to maybe 4:1 or something, and the revs on the torquey motor remain constant, say 1000rpm to achieve the same effect as going from 1000rpm to 4000 rpm at the motor.
I would have thought, that given the amount of torgue, turning an expanding drive cog wouldn't be so hard?
Originally posted by Matsu
I'm still sure that this would be a better car as a hybrid than a battery powered electric, especially if the thing has 1700lbs worth of batteries on board. That weighs more than even the baddest 1970's musclecar engines, what am I writing? It weighs more than entire drivetrains.
A 660cc motorcycle type engine weighs less than 100lbs. It would be hard to build a gas engine/generator, CVT and gas tank combination that weighed more than 500, saving at least 1200lbs in the process.
we really need to scale down the ITER project into an engine size. It will happen one day!
I don't think the goal was to design the best overall performance machine they could, the goal was specifically to make it all-electric.
Originally posted by Splinemodel
I'm not trying to claim that one way is better than the other, but on the telsa motors website it explicitly states that the motor is a three-phase motor. If there's such thing as a three-phase DC motor, it would be the first time I've heard of it.
Hmmm....
V(t) = Sin (wt + PHI) ... where omega ( w ) is zero for Direct Current...
...three phase...
...
... phases with no phase...
...conjugate of the phase...
Step funtions?
...well, someone might have invented it, or be about to invent it, but it ain't gonna be me!
Sancho! My pain meds!
V/R,
Aries 1B
The entire powertrain is behind the seats but between the axles.
The website
The video vs. production exotics(wmv)
As I mentioned earlier, Wright used to work at Tesla Motors. Seems that we have a little "friendly" competition going between them which is great. Of course, if I wasn't a neogreen and my ego needed a Ferrari or a Carrera GT....damn, those engines sound sweet. Nothing like the sound of a Ferrari engine.
Edit: Another video from Discovery Channel ca. http://www.exn.ca/dailyplanet/view.asp?date=5/10/2006#
Originally posted by Splinemodel
Whatever. I'm going to put a Thorium reactor in a electric-powered replica of the A-Team van, and I'll dominate all of you.
You'll never beat my Teenage mutant ninja turtle van. I pity the fool.