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raggie33 said:
i liked that video of ya ev darel on ya website that thing is torqy as hell.

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Raggie -

That's just a little bit. Don't even know why I put that part on my site. If you sweet-talk me just right, I may be willing to send you a DVD of my entire EV1 movie that I made two weeks before my car was taken away from me.
 
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KC2IXE said:
I've also see "large Golf Cart" sized gas carts with an enclosed cab, and a "service" back (locking tool boxes/bins) and a roof rack. Their all made, they just won't let me use it on the street

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These ARE made, and are available. GM calls theirs a GEM. You have a choice of three models. Four-seats, two seats and a utility bed, two seats and a pickup bed. They charge from 110V and a regular plug. Lead-acid batteries. Street legal, and anybody can purchase them for about 5K. The only limit is that you can't legally drive them on streets posted faster than 35mph. I can get you more info if you're truly interested. The biggest market for these cars is retirement communities.
 
yeah that would be awesume darell. i have broadband if that helps.i love stuff like that ive seen most the programs out on solar power and alternative power and starting to learn about ev.
 
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raggie33 said:
yeah that would be awesume darell. i have broadband if that helps.i love stuff like that ive seen most the programs out on solar power and alternative power and starting to learn about ev.

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Broadband won't help you out here...many Gigs of info. This is (relatively) uncompressed video. If you email me your postal address I'll toss a copy of it in the mail to you. It is a DVD.
 
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KC2IXE said:


Either that, or something like

http://www.fleetmotors.com/images/cargoplus_pic.jpg



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That looks to be a Piaggo Porter (aka Daihatsu HiJet). Over here that's a perfectly road-legal vehicle, with either a gas or a 1.2 litre diesel (there's supposed to ba an electric version too). I'm looking for a small, frugal second-hand car (don't like to cycle 30+ miles to work everyday) and the diesel version is high on my list. They don't like cross-winds however, and the cab is a bit cramped.
Saw an ad for electric Fiat Panda, but they didn't mention range, and anyway I live on the 6th floor, so no way to charge an EV /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif

I just found a site with European EV's, but it's in Spanish
 
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raggie33 said:
i think in 10 years electric cars will be vastly difent with inprovemnet s to batterys and efeicany of motor.

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I thought they'd be different from ten years AGO... but no. The best EV on the road today was designed in the 80's and was built in the early 90's. We've gone nowhere. Imagine computer technology holding still for ten years. Ug.

BUT... don't go holding your breath waiting for jumps in electric motor efficiency. Electric motors are already pushing 100% as it is. (compare that to ~15% for the avearge ICE!) All we really need is more battery density. Li-Ion is a great chemistry... just nobody will make them in the size we need because (drum roll please...) there is no market for EVs.
 
I am looking towards fuel cells for the answer. Link those puppies up with an Ultra Capacitor (that is what they call it, each one puts out at least 10KW) No batteries, no charging, no overloading the electrical grid... just put fuel in it and go. Electrical hub motors in the wheels and things get interesting.
I was reading about how Delco bought out a company that makes 135HP hub motors. 540HP 4x4 with thousands of pounds of torque? Now we are talking!
18 wheelers, boats, large trucks etc will run on fuel cells/capacitors with no problems. The fuel cell is the future, these hybrids are just a stop-gap on the way to the solution. Sort of like an experiment to test electric motors, servos, controllers and the like for eventual adoption on fuel cell vehicles.
Were to get the hydrogen from? Last I heard, Millenium Cell actually had some vehicles running (NYC cabs and SUVs) they used the Millenium Cell coupled with a hydrogen fuel cell made by Ballard for power. The Millenium Cell converts borax and water into hydrogen for the fuel cell. If they perfect that, no more petroleum products will be needed for fuels. The borax can be/will be recycled.
Throw the Millenium Cell/Ballard "cold" hydrogen fuel cell/Ultra Capacitor/Delco 135HP hub motors together and produce millions of them. Research is continuing at a break-neck pace. 2010 is coming right around the corner.
You can keep the hybrids.
 
I have VERY serious doubts about hydrogen seeing widespread use anytime soon (in the hands of the general public). Even given all the hurdles to bring it and fuel cell vehicles to market, hydrogen is just too darn dangerous. I am anticipating some really bad accidents with it before the safeguards are perfected.

FYI on hydrogen: this is straight info, forget about cars/etc for a minute. Typical flammable gases (propane/butane/gasoline/etc) have certain concentrations in air they are explosive at. This is usually a surprisingly narrow range. Just going from memory, I think it is only about a 15% variation in concentration that is explosive. Example... propane at concentrations at any other amount other than 50-65% is not explosive. These numbers are not concrete but you get the idea. Hydrogen? It is explosive in air at concentrations from about 4% to about 94%. Really easy to get into trouble fast.

Back to the prior post... the borax is not free. It takes energy to make it. If recycled, that too will take energy. All these processes are not 100% efficient. It will take more energy to make borax/etc than the hydrogen it will produce, period. You're also talking storage and distribution of a substance. That's a whole new infrastructure. If alternative fuel cars are implemented, look for plain old electricity to be involved somewhere.

To Darrel's delight... I am sure we'll see these critters on the road eventually. Cost? I figure they'll be the same overall price as existing cars. Do any of us really think that ford/gm/etc will start selling a cheaper car? If they have gotten us used to paying X for a car, they'll charge the same thing for new cars.

Experiment to test... motor technology is here and has been here for a long time. Controller technology is the same way. I have had torque limiting regenerative braking controllers on my model race cars for over 10 years, and that is a cheap speed control too.

This last note is just for kicks. In a good crowded city, what would be the ramifications of X cars all running on hydrogen? Now I know we would have no CO2/CO/NOx emissions. We would have a good bit of H2O though. I wonder what that would collectively do to the humidity? Would be nice to see some hard data on this.
 
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BentHeadTX said:
These hybrids are just a stop-gap on the way to the solution. Sort of like an experiment to test electric motors, servos, controllers and the like for eventual adoption on fuel cell vehicles.

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Ooh, I'd love to discuss this stuff, but I'm trying like heck not to do it here. Today's hybrids are a giant step BACKWARDS from EVs. Take an elegant electric car that needs no oil, gas, tuneups. Add a gas motor and require the driver to fill it up with gas and oil, and have it serviced. I'll try to be just as brief in my Fuel Cell reply next...
 
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turbodog said:
I have VERY serious doubts about hydrogen seeing widespread use anytime soon (in the hands of the general public).

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Agreed! But not for the same reasons, actually.

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Hydrogen? It is explosive in air at concentrations from about 4% to about 94%. Really easy to get into trouble fast.

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H2 is certainly flamable over a wide range, but not *explosive*. Fact of the matter is, gasoline is far more dangerous simply because the vapor is heavier than air and it does not disperse rapidly. H2 goes sailing skyward in an instant and becomes too dilute to burn surprisingly fast. The real danger is in the compression of this stuff in the tanks. GM is talking about 12,000 PSI tanks. That's what they need to get the range. 12,000 PSI of anything scares the crap out of me. Interesting, though, that we aren't afraid of parking gas cars in our garages, huh?

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Back to the prior post... the borax is not free. It takes energy to make it. If recycled, that too will take energy. All these processes are not 100% efficient. It will take more energy to make borax/etc than the hydrogen it will produce, period. You're also talking storage and distribution of a substance. That's a whole new infrastructure. If alternative fuel cars are implemented, look for plain old electricity to be involved somewhere.

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Well said!

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To Darrel's delight... I am sure we'll see these critters on the road eventually.

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My delight? Not even close. You never read any of my past EV missives, did you? (not that I blame you). The FCV industry is one of the worst things to have happend to the alt-fuel movement lately. The basic problem is we're trying to build an electric car that we can't fuel. And that costs an insane amount of money. Fuel cells are great... just not for mobile use.

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Cost? I figure they'll be the same overall price as existing cars.

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Not a chance. Cheapest way to make them now is about $800,000. Highschool kids are making EV conversions in shop class for $2,000. To bring the cost of a Fuel Cell Vehicle down to even $100,000 we need to create quite a few neat new items that haven't been invented yet. And once we do build it, we still haven't figured out how to fuel it. Except maybe with gasoline reformers onboard.

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This last note is just for kicks. In a good crowded city, what would be the ramifications of X cars all running on hydrogen? Now I know we would have no CO2/CO/NOx emissions. We would have a good bit of H2O though. I wonder what that would collectively do to the humidity? Would be nice to see some hard data on this.

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Along those lines... a large technological hurdle that has yet to be crossed is how to make these things run in freezing temps. The exhaust freezes and you're stuck. So far, they're using resistive heaters to keep ice from forming, but that is obviously counter-productive to generating power. There are many real problems in the way of FCVs. Last year Geoffrey Ballard (Who's company, Ballard Power, built the first commercially available fuel cell) publicly stated this:

"I said this years ago, and I see no reason to change my mind: The family-owned, garaged vehicle is the last vehicle that's going to get a fuel cell. . . I doubt that I will ever see a hydrogen car for personal consumption in a showroom."

Of course he's old, so you have to take it with a grain of salt. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

But this is the grandfather of commercial FC saying this! FCs are great, and are Ballard's life. He doesn't see them working in vehicles for the same reason I don't see them working there.
 
A gallon of gasoline contains around 6 pounds, or 125,000 Btus of energy in it. A gallon of hydrogen (gas) only contains around 40 Btus in it. Quite a difference! Instead of a two cubic foot gasoline tank (15 gallons) in your car, you would need a tank more than 3,000 times bigger, over 6,000 cubic feet, for the equivalent Hydrogen! That's a little more than TWO standard semi trailers (8'wide x 8'high x 45' long or 2900 cubic feet each). Pretty big gas tank!

There are obvious safety considerations in trying to drive a 9,000 pound vehicle down the road. Handling and stopping would be very seriously affected. But there is a bigger concern.

Read more here:

http://mb-soft.com/public2/hydrogen.html
 
On fuel safety:

One measure of the flammable/explosive nature of various fuels is the "flash point".

"The flash point is the temperature at which the liquid gives off sufficient vapours to be ignited. Below this temperature, they do not produce enough vapours to form a combustible mixture with the air. The lower the flash point, the easier it is to have a combustible mixture at room temperature."

Flashpoints for fuels:

300 F BioDiesel
125 F #2-Diesel fuel
-45 F Gasoline
-423 F Hydrogen (we see it really only AS a gas...right?)

Which is why everyone warns you of leaving a gasoline container "uncapped". It is not unusual for the vapors to form within a container of gasoline and then overflow the edge of the container, flow along the floor until it finds an ignition source and then ignite all the way back to the container causing a rather unpleasant explosion.

In WWII, the Sherman tanks ran on gasoline and took on the the name of "Tommy Cookers" because the British used plenty of Shermans and they had the unpleasant side effect of the fuel exploding from fairly minor damage. The German tanks ran on diesel...and were far safer in that respect.

Here is a nice link that discusses some comparison between hydrogen and biodiesel:

Fuels of the future?

The high flash point of biodiesel is one of the reasons it is soooo safe to transport around. When I go to fill up (about once every 6 weeks), I fill my tank plus four 5-gallon diesel fuel containers. People ask me if I don't worry about carrying so much fuel around on the trip home. That is because the dangers of transporting gasoline have been drilled into them (and rightly so).

Does anyone remember the horrible pictures of Ford Pintos being rear ended...and then going up like a bomb as the gasoline spilled out into an area full of sparks or heat from the accident? If the fuel tank had been full of biodiesel...no bomb like explosion. It's just that simple.
 
On range and "energy density":

Not all fuels contain the same amount of energy per pound:

16,000 BTU/lb BioDiesel
18,000 BTU/lb Gasoline
18,400 BTU/lb Diesel fuel
61,000 BTU/lb Hydrogen

But...this is only part of the "range" issue. As you can see, hydrogen packs a lot of energy into a pound. But, how do you pack a pound of hydrogen into a fuel tank? ...only with very, very high pressures.

Here is some information on fuel density at "room temperature and pressure" expressed in BTU/gal:

130,000 BTU/gal Diesel fuel
128,000 BTU/gal BioDiesel
125,000 BTU/gal Gasoline

So...you can see that a gallon of biodiesel must weigh a little more than a gallon of gasoline (it does). This is part of the reason that diesel vehicles get better "miles/gallon". The fuel simply contains more energy. The other reason is that the fuel in a diesel engine is combusted at higher temperatures and pressures and releases more of the energy for useful work.

Over all, the combined mileage improvement for a diesel engine using diesel fuel over a gasoline engine using gasoline is about 30%. Although, in my 2003 VW Golf, my TDI (diesel) engine gets 58% better mileage than the gas version of the Golf.

Darrel...got any data on energy stored per pound by the new lithium polymer batteries? As Darrel might tell you, a battery delivers way more energy to the wheels thru an electric motor than liquid fuel engines do. Much less loss of energy in conversion from storage to movement.
 
Regarding humidity from fuel cells.... Remember that there is about 1.5 gallons of water for every gallon of gasoline burned (as I remember from my high school science class).

And, hydrogen is also a greenhouse gas--And hydrogen is a very difficult gas to keep contained (because of the molecule's small size). If, there was a very large hydrogen infrastructure created, there have been estimates that something like 10% will escape into the atmosphere--increasing greenhouse gases.

But, remember that water vapor is also a greenhouse gas--the most dominant in fact.

There are pluses and minuses to everything--I agree with Darell here--fuel cells, at this time, appear to only be useful for fixed locations. They need either ultra pure fuel (like hydrogen) or complex (still to be engineered/cost reduced) technologies to use other types of fuels (and hydrogen/fuel cell cars are almost as range limited as today's battery electrics).

-Bill
 
The subject of EVs, FCVs, Hybrids etc. is utterly fascinating!

I think it will be after I'm dead before serious change comes about. Maybe not. But I don't see any way I'll be out of something very like my 8000pound Monster F-350 (as an upgrade from that I hope to get a '98-'00 Cummins powered Dodge in a year or two.)

Straight electric would never work for me here around Houston. I have too many 40-70 mile one way trips to customers or suppliers. (at a minimum of 8K pounds, often almost 10k).

Now give me a diesel/electric Hybrid option I can afford...
 
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cy said:
A gallon of hydrogen (gas) only contains around 40 Btus in it.

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There's really no such thing as a "gallon" of a gas. It all depends on the compression. Liquids don't compress, gasses do. The only easy way to compare is by weight.

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There are obvious safety considerations in trying to drive a 9,000 pound vehicle down the road. Handling and stopping would be very seriously affected.

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Indeed. And we already have 8,000+ pound truck-based SUVs on the road today.
 
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