Author Topic: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?  (Read 459978 times)

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Online nctnico

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1700 on: August 23, 2018, 08:17:15 am »
By the way: when I drove through Germany I spotted quite a few Hydrogen filling stations at gas stations. It seems they are rolling out a nation wide network of these. It seems Germany is not putting all their eggs in one basket.
« Last Edit: August 23, 2018, 08:19:36 am by nctnico »
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Offline f4eru

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1701 on: August 23, 2018, 09:19:47 pm »
Hydrogen as an energy storage and transport medium is dead in the water.
Germany often invests in dead technology.
'There's a link.
 
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Online wraper

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1702 on: August 23, 2018, 09:31:53 pm »
Elon musk rightfully called them "fool cells".
Quote
Former European Parliament President Pat Cox estimated that Toyota would initially lose between €50,000 to €100,000 (US$60,000 to US$133,000 at 2014 exchange rates) on each Mirai sold in 2015.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Mirai#cite_note-71
 

Online nctnico

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1703 on: August 23, 2018, 09:46:06 pm »
Well, there are quite a few EVs which are currently being sold at a loss as well. The Chevy Bolt for example. It just makes sense not to put all the eggs into one basket until the dust has settled. This will incur spending money to acquire market share and experience.

Besides that it is rather foolish to try and write off all the R&D costs onto the first couple of products sold. For example: Ford spend $150 million or so on developing their Ecoboost engines. Is the first car they produced sold at a $149960000 dollar loss?  :palm:

Hydrogen makes a lot of sense if you look at storage costs and storage efficiency for electricity in a battery. And I don't mean in a car but as part of the grid.
« Last Edit: August 23, 2018, 10:01:03 pm by nctnico »
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Online wraper

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1704 on: August 23, 2018, 10:01:05 pm »
Hydrogen makes a lot of sense if you look at storage costs and storage efficiency for electricity in a battery. And I don't mean in a car but as part of the grid.
No it does not at all. Producing, storing hydrogen from electricity and reverting it back results in about 80% energy loss. Fuel cells are very expensive, fuel production is highly inefficient, why the hell would you use hydrogen? Not to say range is not better than Tesla has, so without building a broad network of fuel stations they are pretty much useless for trips. You cannot even charge them at your home like EV. Unless you live nearby to one of a few fuel stations, hydrogen car becomes completely useless piece of paperweight.
« Last Edit: August 23, 2018, 10:04:40 pm by wraper »
 

Online nctnico

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1705 on: August 23, 2018, 10:03:25 pm »
Hydrogen makes a lot of sense if you look at storage costs and storage efficiency for electricity in a battery. And I don't mean in a car but as part of the grid.
No it does not at all. Producing and storing hydrogen from electricity results in about 80% energy loss. Fuel cells are very expensive, fuel production is highly inefficient, why the hell would you use hydrogen? Not to say range is not better than Tesla has, so without building a broad network of fuel stations they are pretty much useless for trips. You cannot even charge them at your home like EV. Unless you live nearby to one of a few fuel stations, hydrogen car becomes completely useless piece of paperweight.
Hydrogen from electricity can be done at efficiencies better than 80% so I don't know where you get the 80% loss from. Storing electricity in a battery gives you a 10% to 15% loss as well so all things considered the losses are in the same ball park.

And regarding charging at home: not an option for me so by your definition an EV is a completely useless paperweight.
« Last Edit: August 23, 2018, 10:05:03 pm by nctnico »
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Online wraper

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1706 on: August 23, 2018, 10:05:30 pm »
Hydrogen from electricity can be done at efficiencies better than 80% so I don't know where you get the 80% loss from.
I already edited a comment to make it more clear. I meant full cycle.
 

Online nctnico

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1707 on: August 23, 2018, 10:19:39 pm »
Hydrogen from electricity can be done at efficiencies better than 80% so I don't know where you get the 80% loss from.
I already edited a comment to make it more clear. I meant full cycle.
The same is true for any way of transportation. Potato  Potaato
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Online wraper

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1708 on: August 23, 2018, 10:28:18 pm »
The same is true for any way of transportation. Potato  Potaato
What true? You called it efficient way of energy storage but it's not. Why would you bother to use inefficient and expensive proxy for delivering electricity for electric powertrain when you can use electricity directly with much higher efficiency? And the worst part is you don't even save on fuel compared to ICE and apparently fuel cells have lower longevity than Tesla battery.
« Last Edit: August 23, 2018, 10:31:52 pm by wraper »
 

Online wraper

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1709 on: August 23, 2018, 10:37:15 pm »
Besides that it is rather foolish to try and write off all the R&D costs onto the first couple of products sold. For example: Ford spend $150 million or so on developing their Ecoboost engines. Is the first car they produced sold at a $149960000 dollar loss?  :palm:
:palm: That is without recovering R&D. They are simply twice more expensive to make that they are sold for.
 

Online DougSpindler

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1710 on: August 24, 2018, 01:23:12 am »

Over head power for buses has a long history, but its hard to find really solid information about why these systems are eventually ripped out of most cities. The "trolley bus" system in London was still functioning when I was a kid, and seemed to work pretty well. They ripped it out in the 1960s. Right now some cities in China, like Hangzhou, have extensive overhead power for buses that seems to work pretty well. Now they are going for battery powered buses in a number of Chinese cities. I get the feeling many of these decisions have more to do with fashion than engineering.

I think you will find it wasn't profitable.  In the US look up General Motors streetcar conspiracy.


As a Yank, if I remember my Bristish histroy....  Wasn't it around 1960s that Brittan was almost on it's feet after the war.  Didn't you still have rationing inn the 1950s>

I think you will find it wasn't profitable.  In the US look up General Motors streetcar conspiracy.

As a Yank, if I remember my British history....  Wasn't it around 1960s that Brittan was almost on its feet after the war.  Didn't you still have rationing years after the war ended.  By the 1960s gas rationing was over, the economy was doing well and that’s when you entered a period of consumer spending on luxury items such as cars.  Ridership would have plummeted as people were now driving cars.  Similar story in the US.










 

Offline boffin

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1711 on: August 24, 2018, 04:27:39 am »
Over head power for buses has a long history, but its hard to find really solid information about why these systems are eventually ripped out of most cities. The "trolley bus" system in London was still functioning when I was a kid, and seemed to work pretty well. They ripped it out in the 1960s. Right now some cities in China, like Hangzhou, have extensive overhead power for buses that seems to work pretty well. Now they are going for battery powered buses in a number of Chinese cities. I get the feeling many of these decisions have more to do with fashion than engineering.

They still exist here in Vancouver Canada, and there's quite an extensive system

 

Offline a59d1

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1712 on: August 24, 2018, 05:00:56 am »
Looks like Elon and Tesla has a competitor...…   Anyone know anything about the Karma Revero?
Each year there are new "Tesla killers" named by news outlets. Yet nobody is able to sell even remotely close numbers of electric cars except BYD in China. After all if you don't have the batteries needed, you cannot make a lot of electric cars with decent battery capacity. Not to say getting any profit.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-04/karma-revero-review-this-is-a-very-bad-car-and-here-is-why

"But, at the very least, the Karma Revero definitely looks like you spent a lot money on it."

Do these 'journalists' even use Word?
 

Online wraper

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1713 on: August 24, 2018, 08:36:22 am »
Over head power for buses has a long history, but its hard to find really solid information about why these systems are eventually ripped out of most cities. The "trolley bus" system in London was still functioning when I was a kid, and seemed to work pretty well. They ripped it out in the 1960s. Right now some cities in China, like Hangzhou, have extensive overhead power for buses that seems to work pretty well. Now they are going for battery powered buses in a number of Chinese cities. I get the feeling many of these decisions have more to do with fashion than engineering.

They still exist here in Vancouver Canada, and there's quite an extensive system
We have plenty of trolley buses here in Riga. New units are still bought. Their number is about 75% of usual buses.




« Last Edit: August 24, 2018, 05:40:42 pm by wraper »
 

Online coppice

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1714 on: August 24, 2018, 04:51:52 pm »
As a Yank, if I remember my British history....  Wasn't it around 1960s that Brittan was almost on its feet after the war.  Didn't you still have rationing years after the war ended.  By the 1960s gas rationing was over, the economy was doing well and that’s when you entered a period of consumer spending on luxury items such as cars.  Ridership would have plummeted as people were now driving cars.  Similar story in the US.
I think you mean "as someone who never bothers to look anything up".
 

Offline woodchips

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1715 on: August 24, 2018, 06:39:02 pm »
I remember reading about hydrogen power in vehicles. What seemed to be the biggest problem was actually storing the stuff. The molecule size is so small, and storage pressure so high, than no metal to metal seal would hold it, and any elastomer seal simply leaked. If used on a daily basis then the leak rate wasn't a problem, just don't expect your car to work after being in the airport carpark for 3 weeks.

This was many years ago, is this still true, has it been sorted?
 

Online coppice

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1716 on: August 24, 2018, 06:45:02 pm »
I remember reading about hydrogen power in vehicles. What seemed to be the biggest problem was actually storing the stuff. The molecule size is so small, and storage pressure so high, than no metal to metal seal would hold it, and any elastomer seal simply leaked. If used on a daily basis then the leak rate wasn't a problem, just don't expect your car to work after being in the airport carpark for 3 weeks.

This was many years ago, is this still true, has it been sorted?
The situation seems to be the same today. I am unclear what happens if you put one of these constantly venting cars in a garage, and leave it. There would appear to be a serious risk of explosion if you confine the vehicle for any length of time. I find it interesting how easy it is to hold air in simple containers like car tyres, yet the somewhat smaller molecules of hydrogen completely change the picture.
 

Online nctnico

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1717 on: August 24, 2018, 09:29:46 pm »
I remember reading about hydrogen power in vehicles. What seemed to be the biggest problem was actually storing the stuff. The molecule size is so small, and storage pressure so high, than no metal to metal seal would hold it, and any elastomer seal simply leaked. If used on a daily basis then the leak rate wasn't a problem, just don't expect your car to work after being in the airport carpark for 3 weeks.

This was many years ago, is this still true, has it been sorted?
The situation seems to be the same today. I am unclear what happens if you put one of these constantly venting cars in a garage, and leave it. There would appear to be a serious risk of explosion if you confine the vehicle for any length of time. I find it interesting how easy it is to hold air in simple containers like car tyres, yet the somewhat smaller molecules of hydrogen completely change the picture.
Aren't car batteries leaking Hydrogen as well? If leaking hydrogen was such a big problem then cars wouldn't be allowed to be parked inside at all. In reality Hydrogen is a very light gas and it will float up quickly. Besides that there are ways to bind Hydrogen into a solid form and turn it back into gas quickly.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline SeanB

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1718 on: August 24, 2018, 09:57:54 pm »
Big issue with hydrogen fuel cells is you need large amounts of platinum group metals per vehicle, and not just in a flash coat a few atoms thick like in catalytic converters, but in measurable thicknesses. As well they are exposed to atmosphere deliberately and thus are susceptible to poisoning by contaminants, like lead ( lead free fuel is not totally lead free, simply because of all the older equipment that had decades of TEL in them leaving a coat, plus the base oil is not exactly lead and heavy metal free anyway) and just degrades with time anyway. 1Troy ounce of platinum and Rhodium per vehicle does add up rather fast, and it is a cost.

Hydrogen generation in lead acid batteries is mostly in charging, and most modern batteries have added things like antimony in the plates to recombine this to not lose water, and for larger flooded batteries there are also catalytic recombiners that reduce the venting of Hydrogen and also reduce water loss in the cells. just sitting idle they do not generate gas, while stored high pressure hydrogen, or a metal hydride, does always have gas diifusing out through the grain boundaries of the material, nothing is going to stop hydrogen, just slow it down, other than cryogenic freezing it to a slush and keeping that in a really good Dewar flask tank. 2Kelvin is not exactly something easy to achieve, despite the best attempts by space companies, as this gives a 10% improvement in fuel density over the regular liquid as it is denser.
 

Online nctnico

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1719 on: August 24, 2018, 10:09:32 pm »
1Troy ounce of platinum and Rhodium per vehicle does add up rather fast, and it is a cost.
Still way cheaper compared to a battery.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Online coppice

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1720 on: August 24, 2018, 10:18:09 pm »
[The situation seems to be the same today. I am unclear what happens if you put one of these constantly venting cars in a garage, and leave it. There would appear to be a serious risk of explosion if you confine the vehicle for any length of time. I find it interesting how easy it is to hold air in simple containers like car tyres, yet the somewhat smaller molecules of hydrogen completely change the picture.
Aren't car batteries leaking Hydrogen as well? If leaking hydrogen was such a big problem then cars wouldn't be allowed to be parked inside at all. In reality Hydrogen is a very light gas and it will float up quickly. Besides that there are ways to bind Hydrogen into a solid form and turn it back into gas quickly.
Most lead acid batteries in cars are sealed these days, but even unsealed ones aren't venting much hydrogen when the car is in storage, and the battery is being drained by little more than the clock and burglar alarm.

Although hydrogen can be bound in metal hydrides and various organic matrices, all the hydrogen powered cars I have looked at use pressurised hydrogen tanks, which vent most of their contents over a week or so, as the hydrogen warms up. That's a lot of hydrogen. Of course, hydrogen rises rapidly in air. That's what these cars rely on to vent the hydrogen safely when they are in the open or in a well ventilated car park. However, that doesn't work well in a garage, where the space above the top of the door could be quite well sealed. Articles about hydrogen cars talk a lot about the venting issues, and the work in progress which might improve on this (such as entrapment in organic matrices). I haven't seen one that talks about the garage issue.
 

Offline jmelson

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1721 on: August 24, 2018, 10:18:32 pm »
I remember reading about hydrogen power in vehicles. What seemed to be the biggest problem was actually storing the stuff. The molecule size is so small, and storage pressure so high, than no metal to metal seal would hold it, and any elastomer seal simply leaked. If used on a daily basis then the leak rate wasn't a problem, just don't expect your car to work after being in the airport carpark for 3 weeks.

This was many years ago, is this still true, has it been sorted?
We used to use instruments that ran off hydrogen.  We even used it in aircraft.  So, we got a tank that stored Hydrogen on Titanium powder in a lower-pressure cylinder.  I think this is what is being used in smaller vehicle Hydrogen storage tanks.
We never had any problem with leaking, except at various fittings.  You just had to use "trouble-bubble" on all fittings whenever they were disconnected and reconnected, to spot any leakage.  The high pressure bottles were filled to 1500 PSI, I think.  The powder-storage tank ran about 300 PSI, and there was a limit on how fast you could extract the Hydrogen from it.  No problem for our little instrument, but could be an issue for a car.  The 300 PSI powder-filled tank held as much gas as the 1500 PSI high pressure bottle.

I imagine there was SOME diffusion through the thin-walled powder-filled tank, but we sure never were aware of it, I would take a wild guess and say it would take many months to empty out.

Jon
« Last Edit: August 24, 2018, 10:21:50 pm by jmelson »
 

Online DougSpindler

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1722 on: August 24, 2018, 10:19:52 pm »
I remember reading about hydrogen power in vehicles. What seemed to be the biggest problem was actually storing the stuff. The molecule size is so small, and storage pressure so high, than no metal to metal seal would hold it, and any elastomer seal simply leaked. If used on a daily basis then the leak rate wasn't a problem, just don't expect your car to work after being in the airport carpark for 3 weeks.

This was many years ago, is this still true, has it been sorted?

Problem with Hydrogen is it is 4 times less energy dense than gasoline.  One would need a hydrogen tank 4 times the size of a gas tank to travel the same amount of miles.

When it comes to energy density one just can't beat gasoline except with nucelar.


 

Online coppice

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1723 on: August 24, 2018, 10:36:35 pm »
I remember reading about hydrogen power in vehicles. What seemed to be the biggest problem was actually storing the stuff. The molecule size is so small, and storage pressure so high, than no metal to metal seal would hold it, and any elastomer seal simply leaked. If used on a daily basis then the leak rate wasn't a problem, just don't expect your car to work after being in the airport carpark for 3 weeks.

This was many years ago, is this still true, has it been sorted?

Problem with Hydrogen is it is 4 times less energy dense than gasoline.  One would need a hydrogen tank 4 times the size of a gas tank to travel the same amount of miles.

When it comes to energy density one just can't beat gasoline except with nuclear.
Hydrogen is less energy dense by volume, but more energy dense by mass. The snag right now with hydrogen's density is the substantial mass of the storage system, so the system level mass is rather high, even though they are using a storage system specifically designed to keep the mass down - e.g. they don't use the kind of enormously thick and heavy tank which could hold the hydrogen if it fully warmed to the environmental temperature. There is ongoing work which might substantially change that picture, but there is no certainty. Most entrapment schemes either cost a fortune, are heavy, need unreasonable temperatures to release the hydrogen, or combine all three problems.
 

Online DougSpindler

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #1724 on: August 24, 2018, 10:37:09 pm »
Any one hearing of deaths from PHEV exhaust?  This almost happened to us.  Wife came home parked the PHEV in the garage.  She was monetarily distracted by our kids and the dog.  She exited the car, and plugged in the cable to charge the car. 

I walked by the garage and what I thought was the fan for the charger, but it sounded funny.  I then noticed the car was still in "running" mode and the fan sound was actually the engine running.  I thought if the charger cable were plugged PHEVs would detect the connection and power off the car.  But they don't.

According  to my wife there have been half a dozzen or so deaths from CO posioning for PHEV cars accidently left running in peopls garages.



 


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