It's a brilliant car. If only we can figure out a WAY better method to generate electricity than coal, nuclear fission, etc. If nuclear fusion power plants work, this car would be PERFECT. No fuel surge issues, no weight distribution vriance coaused by fuel use, etc. No more exhaust emmsions issues.
What appeals to me is the fact that this is another show of the LFS spirit (David vs BIG CORPORATE GOLIATH).
That's a nice car, but there's no price tag on the site and it doesn't look like they have any non-US distributors yet, in fact, it doesn't look like they have many US distributors yet.
Just a shame it's worse for the environment that a petrol car. Of course, the manufactuers and the governments won't tell you that, because they don't have the environment as a genuine interest.
That's why I said that unless you actually HAVE a much cleaner way to generate power than today's methods, the actual well to wheel efficiency is even worse. Basically, it's well -> power station -> car instead of straight hydrocarbon to car.
Electric cars are clean ONLY IF there is a clean way to generate electrical power.
And the 'drivetrain' will be almost impossible to recycle or dispose of cleanly. Nasty heavy metals and chemicals.
Buying Electric Cars Destroys The Planet.
^ There you all go, a nice informative logo to put on a t-shirt and wear ith pride whilst flooring you're 16 litre V32 engine drinking 9 gallons to the mile.
Good news is, battery technology will only get better. With nanotechnology, super capacitors and other futue echnologies, it's only time before the battery problem is solved. Besides, today's batteries are mercury free as well.
Given the chance, it's only amatter of time before elecrical storage exceeds hydrocarbon energy density.
Reimnds me of the diesel post where hardcore petrolheads try everything they could to bash diesels. If diesels evolve as quickly as they did in the past decade for the next 10 years, petrols would be almost obsolete.
Tristan, I agree with your practical concerns about today's electric cars, except for the battery which will see good development in the near future. However, unless we manage to master Nuclear fusion or some other relatively clean electrical generation technologies, your petrol or diesel acars are still ultimately cleaner.
Generating power at a centralised location, with a number of large scale efficiency measures in place, gets far more energy yield for the same materials volume, and less emissions.
a) That's not very fast, 130mph is saloon territory. The 0-60 time is only fast because of the abudance of low down torque.
b) How much do all these batteries weigh? How high is the Centre of Gravity?
No power steering. Been waiting forever for such a modern car (McLaren F1 not counted of course).
Excellent brakes and suspension. Who said EVs are meant to handle like crap?
Beautiful Yokohama Neova Advan tires and forged Al wheels? Check. One of the most beautiful powerbands I've seen so far? Check(Will only get better if they actually succeed). Cutting edge technology all-round? Check.
Weight under 1200kg! Makes your Toyota Corrolla look obese.
LFS could obviously use such a technological breakthrough. This thing could dominate any rack that emphasizes cornering and acceleration over top speed. Besides, 130mph isn't slow, unless you're doing the Autobahn or Monza.
I quite agree, in terms of the real thing unless you live in Germany provided the car accelerates well up to 70mph or so what does it matter what the performance is beyond that point?
In terms of LFS, it means medium speed corners would pose a particular and fresh challenge as you try to maintain the highest cornering speed you can instead of throttling away at the apex.
My Mitsubishi Tredia weighs only 880kg kerb (half tank of fuel, all fluids topped). Not too bad, eh? If it goes for further weight reductions (roll cage, carbon fiber doors, hood and front fenders, and all the standard racing weight reduction procedures), it'll make your 800kg car look obese. Even if I mount a Lancer Evolution drivetrain and engine into it, it could still weigh under 1000kg(all out racing trim, of course). And it's a proper 4 door salloon car!
My point is, you get something that's practically quicker and more high tech with LESS weight. It's no stripper car, so don't reasonbly expect under 1 ton weights. And don't forget that the battery packs could easily be mounted as low as possible for low COG, since they're quit flat anyway.
Overall, its a massive progress over the old useless EVs. This thing is actually quick and has decent range! Now that's progress.
My car isn't realyl stripped either. It's just an small, old Polo 86c, without any unneccesary motors for like power windows, power steering, or any stuff most of today's drivers would miss. I'm happy enough I have a heater - why do I need climatronic, if I have windows, which I can lower. But most people don't understand me.
Oh another thing about the low weight. There isn't any safety stuff. With a today's car you crash into to a tree and are unharmed. You crash into a pedestriant and he's unharmed. With my car you crash into a tree and you're dead. You run over a person, and he's killed (slightly exagerating )
oh btw: racing polos are quite a bit lighter, iirc ~700kg. You can often see them in german hillclimb races
Same with my Mitsubishi Tredia. Not really a skeleton car, just lacks power windows, auto transmission, power steering and all the unnecessary gadgets. And it's bigger than your car, being a mid sized sedan on the compact side.
Oh, I must state that you've overstated the safety of modern cars. Car vs padestrian? Padestrian usually dies or suffers massive injuries (800kg vs human mass). If you crash your 2006 Mercedes into a tree at 60kph, you'll likely die anyway. No electronic wizardry and number of airbags can compensate for lack of basic structural integrity (lack of genuine roll cage structure) and proper restraint (Race Harnesses).
But in your post, you mention all the things, which I think make the cars unneccesaryly heavy. All the "safety" measures aren't quite thought through. Okay, maybe you can have a crash at 5mph more and you won't die from it, but if they wanted to make really safe cars, the manufacturers would create cars with monocoques (sp?) or rollcages along with fitting racing-seatbelts. But people don't want that in their car, it makes it look "ugly" or "bold". Current safety measures are IMHO just there to give people
a wrong perception of security. Just like a placebo.
How stupid of me! I completely forgot that distilling and distributing petrol does absolutely no environmental harm! The petrol comes straight out the ground and into my car!
The generation of the electricity for these vehicles isn't the problem, a power plant is far more efficient than a petrol or diesel engine. As Tristain said, the problem comes at the end of the car's life. Batteries can only take so many charge/discharge cycles, and when their end of life comes they have to be disposed of, which isn't easy.
The Tesla roadster is all well and good, but this beats it. It's made by a local company, 0-60 in 4sec, 150mph and a 200 mile range. The range can be increased to 1000 miles with the addition of a small generator to charge the batteries, which gives the equivalent of 80mpg. The only downside is that it would cost £200k to make another, but that might not be so bad compared to the Tesla roadster, which we still don't know the price of.
While we're comparing penis sizes (car weights), mine weighs 740kg.
I'm saying that transpotation of petrol and diesel isn't as inefficient as you might think. Distillation is just a matter of heating it up to a certain tenperature and collecting different distillates based their evaporative temps. Since the oil industry is VERY old, the actual processing is remarkably efficient, Hey, inefficiecny = unnecessary cost = worse bottom line. And all you seem to care cbout is the top speed. You completely neglected the facts that the Tesla is more economical and has a longer range. So it's a rather silly comparison.
Did I get this wrong? 640hp?!?! and a 0-60 in 4.5s? Top speed of ONLY 240kph?!?! Slooow.
Let me remind you that Li-ion cells are A:not heavy and Botentially recyclable. It's a base metal based ion. And you completely neglect all the upcoming new electrical power storage technologies (nanohair charge accumulators, etc). As for EVs, if you read Racecar Engineering (i'm a regular reader), there's even a 4WD LX style roadster with 1 motor per wheel and scary top speeds as well. They're even planning a single seater version.
Finally, I thoght this was an LFS forum, so its about cars, not the sizes of your organs. However, I do wonder what car are you talking about. Is it a stripped compact sedan? A small hatchback? A souped up mini? Be more specific if you want an honest comparison and discussion, otherwise I could just say that I own an F-1 car that weighs only 500kg empty.
The top speed isn't much different than the other LFS road cars.
They also have a Solar Option, where you pay for solar-generated electricity to be fed into the power grid by a third party, thus offsetting the power your roadster uses.
Edit: Oh, the price is rumored to be around $100k.
One day, cars will be very different. Cars like this Tesla are easing the transition to the future, including the performance oriented bunch, us. I enjoy driving and its good to know that companies like this want to keep motoring alive, at least electricly. Anyway, I like the sounds and rumbles of good old fashioned gas motors over the whirr of electric ones.
My vote, keep motoring alive IRL.
Keep Electric cars out of LFS.
(If any electric car should be added, it should be the battery powered Ariel Atom that beat the Carrera GT in 1/4 mile drag race! )
And fossil fuels would still be burnt! Don't forget that if everyone was driving around in electric cars, then there would be more strain on the power stations. It is cheaper, and faster to build a coal or oil powerplant than it is to build a nuclear power plant, so theres even more pollution. And, there is electricity that gets lost when travelling through power lines. I personnal think that it would be cheaper just to create new petrol engines that are even more efficiant and pollute less.
EDIT:
Thanks, I didn't browse the page that much! This would never go "mainstream" if everyone had to pay another bill in addition to their existing electric bill. And, I doubt electricity is cheaper than diesel or petrol.
EDIT2: What if they have a problem with their lithium ion batteries exploding, like dell did? :O
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