Quote from tristancliffe :

I know about load balancing. But what happens if the public don't leave on in such regular patterns? What if cars are charged at motorway services as and when they need it (ever 30 miles). The load will be massive. All the energy in all the fuel tanks around the world will need to be carried via the National Grid (or equivalent). I just don't see how it can be viable in anything but the short term, small scale - i.e. not a replacment or alternative for gasoline.

Just like we went from having to get up a hill in reverse using combustion engines - make them better. Or.. just get better sources of electrical power. There are thousands of little strands we can play with and tinker for ideas tristan, use that big brain and money power to figure some out.

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Quote from rusty8 :

-1

Thank you for your lengthy contribution.

Quote from tristancliffe :

But what happens if the public don't leave on in such regular patterns?

the majority of city traffic can easily work that way

Quote :

What if cars are charged at motorway services as and when they need it (ever 30 miles).

uhm thats utter rubbish and you know it... modern batteries easily get a range of 200km without being any heavier than a petrol car and in city traffic where half the time driving is spent braking you can recycle a considerable amount of energy
so even with a normal round trip to work and back the majority of cars could be kept at 60% change to prolong the batterys life

for motorway driving with long range battery packs youd be looking at a fairly massive amount of power to get 10+C charge current which to be viable would have to be generated or at least temporarily buffered at the charging station anyway

Quote :

The load will be massive. All the energy in all the fuel tanks around the world will need to be carried via the National Grid (or equivalent). I just don't see how it can be viable in anything but the short term, small scale - i.e. not a replacment or alternative for gasoline.

it would be quite a bit of load but in the long run it will be the more sensible solution both economically and ecologically
in case you havent noticed even the oil companies predictions which tend to be optimistically project that the oil production peak will happen within the next ~20 years in other words prices will go up dramatically in the near future

Quote from tristancliffe :

You say that as though you're an adult? Why not leave the smartass comments until you are actually smart, rather than just an ass.

My attempt at humor has apparently failed. I'm being no more of a troll then others in this thread, who have hijacked it to argue about electric cars in general. This has nothing to do with having an Electric car in LFS! So don't complain about my attempt at humor when you have also dragged the thread off topic.

Quote from tristancliffe :

It just so happens I used this thread to point it out to him again.

Doesn't that make you a troll, also?

Quote from tristancliffe :

I know about load balancing. But what happens if the public don't leave on in such regular patterns? What if cars are charged at motorway services as and when they need it (ever 30 miles). The load will be massive. All the energy in all the fuel tanks around the world will need to be carried via the National Grid (or equivalent). I just don't see how it can be viable in anything but the short term, small scale - i.e. not a replacment or alternative for gasoline.

A) Do you really think it's impossible to see a pattern in the amount of usage and refuelling? Chances are most of the load will be during the morning and afternoon hours, when people return from work.

B) Currently, all our gasoline is transported by trucks from station to station. Doesn't this waste more energy than a grid which already exists? And isn't this system just as vulnerable as the grid?

a) Most fuel stations are used most of the time during the day. And then people will also charge up at night (or leave it on charge). So the load becomes close to maximum all of the time, rather than just when people turn their TVs or kettles on.

b) Can the current grid cope with 10x as much load though?

Upgrading a grid is peanuts - adding more lines, or thicker lines, and more routing-stations isn't a problem. Current grids are overbuilt as it is, and it's the powerstation capacity which limits the system. By the time we have commercially-viable mass production electric cars, we'll have a grid capable of supporting it without a problem.


And again - when you charge the car at night, there's no rush, right? It'll charge for an hour or two until it's full, and then it stops - like the cellphone when it's full, it'll only recharge what it loses during the night.
Without any statistical data, my assumption is that most of the car-generated loads will be when people arrive after their morning commute (so around 8-9am, office-hours) and their afternoon drive back home (so around 5-6pm) - those are the times with the most traffic, so I assume that after that is cleared, people will reach home and charge the cars.

Quote from tristancliffe :

So the load becomes close to maximum all of the time, rather than just when people turn their TVs or kettles on.

which as i pointed out is an advantage

we need admins help here, too much OT!
dudes, we are talking about ELECTRIC RACEABOUT not solarpower and anything else.
plz just post, what do you think about the car not what you think about solar chimneys and towers.

Tristancliffe, you really don't want to admitt that a 250 hp electric car that is as fast as a 500 hp petrol powered car is not a thing of the future, can you?

Quote from tristancliffe :

How do electric cars (I'm not going to call them EVs because it's a poncy initialism) stop the use of fossil fuels? Instead of burning them in your engine you burn them in a power station. The overall efficiency is going to be about the same really...

The only difference is the electric cars have nasty batteries that are (I read) harder to dispose of than nuclear waste...

Quoted for truth.

We don't really need any more "slow" cars, which the ERA would be, if it became a real car in LFS.

What we need are more midrange cars, and a wider variety of them, model types, engine formats, sizes and so on.

Or rather, quoted for lack of truth. As we've said - a central powerstation, considering every single factor, still uses far less fuel than a car - and alternative energy is easier to apply in a full-blown facility than on a car.

The Electric Raceabout slow? According to them (and AutoblogGreen), it's based on an Audi R8 chassis, weighs around 1250kg, and is supposed to reach over 200km/h. That's slow? Sounds rather fast, and like an idea for the next 4wd car in LFS - even with a regular engine (diesel?).

Yes that is slow.

And I'd guess that, PER MILE, the total energy needed to move an electric powered vehicle over that of a simular sized petrol vehicle is much more, simply because of the AMOUNT of energy needed to power them.

Like Tristan said, and for once I couldn't agree with him more, the amount of fossil fuels to actually create the electricity far exceeds that to just put it in your car and go.

What's more, if you choose not to use your car, it's not like you're burning it up anyway, where as the electricity (and the manufacture of electricity) is being produced whether you want it or not.

Edit : By the way, that is one sick ass avatar. Make it full screen and give me for my desktop please

And again, that's a view that only Tristan expressed - and almost everyone else doesn't agree with.

If you consider that slow, why is there a Caterham in your avatar? It's also a sporty car that's not focused on top-speed. Is it slow? No, Caterhams are some of the fastest road-legal cars ever produced. Or do you consider the R8 on which it is based as slow? Nobody has hard numbers yet except for the Finns at Helsinki Poly, so we can only speculate - but it's reasonable to assume that it'll beat the crap out of XFGs, XRGs, and maybe even the higher TBO cars.

A) Nope, per mile they don't use more energy - on raw energy calculations, electric cars can do over 100MPG, if you calculate it to factor the amount of joules in a gallon.

B) No, the amount of fuel needed for a given amount of electricity (or power) is lower in a big, centralized powerstation than in thousands of little cars.

C) No, power-stations lower their output at off-peak hours and, as others pointed out, excess energy is stored.


This is turning into a "pick a side and stick with it" argument, so perhaps it should stop?

Quote from gingiba :

And again, that's a view that only Tristan expressed - and almost everyone else doesn't agree with.

Because everyone else is stupid and doesn't have a brain, can't think and be logical when doing so, etc.

Quote :

If you consider that slow, why is there a Caterham in your avatar? It's also a sporty car that's not focused on top-speed. Is it slow? No, Caterhams are some of the fastest road-legal cars ever produced. Or do you consider the R8 on which it is based as slow? Nobody has hard numbers yet except for the Finns at Helsinki Poly, so we can only speculate - but it's reasonable to assume that it'll beat the crap out of XFGs, XRGs, and maybe even the higher TBO cars.

I took a 6 month break from the forums, I haven't changed it since, if you must know.

And, oh, I'm sorry. Since when can we compare FICTICIOUS cars on a game (Albeit "simular" in looks and certain performance aspects to real cars) to real cars, whether made or in the development stage?

Oh that's right, you can't. A Caterham R500 (Yes, I've had a go in one) is helluva fast, however that's over £40,000.($80,000) Most people can't even afford that for thier normal cars, let alone for a secondary car used on sunday mornings and the odd trackday. However, the real point in a Caterham is it's cornering abilitlies, which is why it can compete so well with many much more powerful cars.

Any idiot can go fast in a straight line.

Furthermore what does speed have to do when creating, what is basically, an attempt at making an enviromentally freindly car. (Unless I am mis-understood?)

The Audi R8 is one HELL of a car, Clarkson on Top Gear is always banging on about it, all the mags I read wet thier pants at the mere mention of it's name, however it is not an enviromentally freindly car.

Thus basing an enviromentally freindly car on such a platform is nothing more than a marketing ploy; Simular to that crappy Proton Gen2 thing. "Lotus developed ride and handling" - When it actual fact in drives and rides like a pile of crap.

Quote :

A) Nope, per mile they don't use more energy - on raw energy calculations, electric cars can do over 100MPG, if you calculate it to factor the amount of joules in a gallon.

I'm talking fossil fuel consumption. Electric cars don't do MPG. They use thier joules, and different grades of fuel can easily (probbably since it can alter fuel economy and performance) effect that.

However the main point I was trying to make is that to charge up your electric car, you're sucking juice from a big fuel burning powerstation that's clogging up the atmosphere twice as much as any car does.

Quote :

B) No, the amount of fuel needed for a given amount of electricity (or power) is lower in a big, centralized powerstation than in thousands of little cars.

Sure, that's why. in the UK at least, the power companies prouduced more CO2 than all the cars on the road did.
As you can see here)

Quote :

C) No, power-stations lower their output at off-peak hours and, as others pointed out, excess energy is stored.

Yes, this is true. That's the one thing I payed attention to back at school. However electricity cannot be "stored" forever, and constantly needs to be supplied. (That's why batterys and what not will run out even if you don't use them, last time I checked o.o)

Quote :

This is turning into a "pick a side and stick with it" argument, so perhaps it should stop?

This is a "one persons opinion happens to co-exist with anothers, so I'll hate them both."
However as you wish. Cease fire.

Quote from CasseBent :

Would suck in lfs, 12 hour pitstops

TOTALLY WRONG

whats with battery replacement? it takes about 1 minute to replace the cellpack

and just for knowledge:

an otto motor has an efficiency of about 30% (the rest is unusable heat )
a direct current motor has an efficiency of 85% (servos a bit more)

and one other thing: if you use a hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell, you can get further because chemical batterys are inefficient energy storages

Aha - Hydrogen fuel cells. Now THAT is a solution (once they can be made, stored and refilled easily, and have a lifetime of more than a month, and a range of more than 500km [and that's for the sporty cars with low fuel ranges. 1000km is more of a minimum] )

Quote from tristancliffe :

Aha - Hydrogen fuel cells. Now THAT is a solution (once they can be made, stored and refilled easily, and have a lifetime of more than a month, and a range of more than 500km [and that's for the sporty cars with low fuel ranges. 1000km is more of a minimum] )

the newest gens of hydrogen-oxygen fuel cells have a lifetime of several years and they can reach over 1200kms. VW and Opel are making huge tests here in germany. refuelling is no problem: set on the pipeline, choose how many hydrogen you want and your car is refilled in 20 secs

Quote from tristancliffe :

No, actually I've only not won a race twice this year, and both times I was 2nd. Thanks for asking. Will hopefully clinch the championship at the next round, if a few certain conditions are met...
But I still hold my opinion, I still think that electric cars are absolutely NOT the future, but a politically fuelled stop-gap by 'green' idiots/fanboys, I still think anyone who uses the initialism EV is a twat... I'm not fooled by people who think that burning fossil fuels in a power station constantly just in case everyone plugs in their car is significantly better for the environment that gasoline engines. Once electric cars become widespread I'm going to convert all the cars I own to carbs, and make people envious of proper cars again

But I got bored of this forum a few months ago, and post relatively infrequently. Too many morons these days. The only rescue would be a lot of new content and features in LFS (I can't believe I'm writing this) that doesn't appeal to morons (the F1 car was one of the worst things to happen to LFS) so that people actually discuss LFS rather than come up with stupid off-topic stuff all the time... Maybe the off-topic forum needs removing?

Every single word I agree with. Especially paragraph two.

Quote from tristancliffe :

Aha - Hydrogen fuel cells. Now THAT is a solution (once they can be made, stored and refilled easily, and have a lifetime of more than a month, and a range of more than 500km [and that's for the sporty cars with low fuel ranges. 1000km is more of a minimum] )

oh for crying out loud... educate yourself on new battery technology and stop babbling nonsense from 20 years ago when lead and nicd was cutting edge
the simple fact that someone with the word DRIFT (in caps !) in his nick agrees with you should be enough to make you reconsider you position

hydrogen is a dead end for everything other than long range trips where it could be used as a replacement for batteries... blowing lots of steam into the air is likely to increase global warming and producing hydrogen has an efficiency of 50% so any process that has less than 60% efficiency in getting the hydrogen to the car and using it to drive the car will make the whole deal less efficient than petrol (yay)

Quote from Shotglass :

blowing lots of steam into the air is likely to increase global warming

Then why wasn't there a massive "climate crisis" when there were steam engines blowing steam into the air all over the place?

Quote from wheel4hummer :

Then why wasn't there a massive "climate crisis" when there were steam engines blowing steam into the air all over the place?

aside from the fact that the number of steam engines in the entire world was probably smaller than the number of cars in a medium to large city and that the world population at the time when steam got unpopular could fit comfortably into china today?
that question is daft even by your standards

Quote from Shotglass :

aside from the fact that the number of steam engines in the entire world was probably smaller than the number of cars in a medium to large city and that the world population at the time when steam got unpopular could fit comfortably into china today?

Cars already emit water vapor, though. You get a slight bit of water when combusting hydrocarbons. In cars with catalytic converters, you get quite a bit of water vapor, especially when your engine is cold.

which is a huge difference to producing water as the sole "waste"product of your energy source

although it could of couse swing the other way and produce more than enough vapour to form clouds which would cool the earth
if you think this through it means that it would rain all the time and wed all be as miserable and cynical as the english... and whod like that?