Recently in Editorials Category

Recently, I was discussing my vision of electric cars on american roads with a few different people.  During the course of the conversations, I explained the limitations of range, battery life, charging and top speed.  What I ended up explaining was that pure EVs are going to require an acceptance of different driving habits from most drivers.  There will be exceptions, of course, but for most families there will be 2 major options:  Drive hybrids or have 2 cars.  Both of these options will work for most people.

The DIY website has been going under some pretty impressive changes and has included some pretty interesting threads over the past few months, but with over 3000 members and an average of 400 new threads a week there is a lot of content to go over. So I thought it would be helpful to pick out some of the highlights of what I have found to be the most interesting threads and developments of DIYelectriccar over the past few weeks:

Big news! U.S. presidential candidates Barak Obama and John McCain are talking about EVs. Finally, American politicians, corporate executives and grassroots advocates all seem to agree that powering cars from clean, affordable and domestic electricity makes sense. However, politicians have talked about electric vehicles before and in the past, the talk did not translate into government support for practical technologies. Will things be different this time? Are the candidates finally committed to electric vehicles?

Major news keeps buzzing about Hydrogen, Flex-fuel, E85/Ethanol, Bio-Diesel and other alternative energies but when it comes down to it, I believe that only the least common denominator will be able to survive in a world of constantly changing energy sources and that thing is called electricity.

Does anyone remember natural gas lighting in houses?  How about oil?  They were once a big hit, just like our oil-based engines in our cars are today.  They went away for one simple reason.  It's easier to convert many sources from many locations into electricity and distribute via wiring than it is to try to have competing fossil-fuel based systems in different houses.  I believe the current paradigm of personal transportation is much like this.

I've decided to try and work out the cost comparisons for a Lithium pack vs a Lead pack for a set range and a set number of years. Is Lead Acid actually cheaper or does is just seem that way up front? This article aims to find that out. The method is to get 10kWh of usable energy, I’ll try to get that with Lead and with Lithium and see what we find is cheaper in the long run. Assuming an efficiency of 250Wh per mile (a compact car) we should get a range of 40 miles (65km) with either pack. I’ll be using Australian prices since I’ve already researched them, but the comparison is probably close in other countries too.

Ah Oil, we’ve had plenty of good times together haven’t we? Remember me learning to drive… buying my first car… our first road trip together. We’ve made some pretty good memories… you and I. But if I’m honest I think we should start seeing other fuels. The last thing I want to do is hurt you but I think we are just drifting apart, heading in separate directions. You are having such a fantastic career, you’ve really found your niche and that more expensive demographic really suits you. I know your parents in the Middle East are really proud; $100 a barrel, wow, you’ve really made it. But you know I’m not that kind of guy, it’s just not my world. It was great when your career was just starting to grow and we could afford to spend a lot of time together, we could just hop in the car and go for a drive, just because we felt like it. Our relationship used to be about freedom, the open road, but now that you’re moving on with you life I feel like I’m being left behind, playing catch up. It’s taking big sacrifices in other areas of my life to keep this relationship alive, it seems like every week I’m have to put in more and more but you just stay the same. I’m starting to question whether or not its worth all the effort. Let’s face it you’re a bit high maintenance, making all these demands about your needs for us to stay together. First it was just lubricant, but now you want me to get coolant and filters. It’s all too much.

Just out of curiosity I thought it might be interesting to record to statistics of DIY electric car, since it seemed like it was growing pretty fast. After just a month of fairly sporadic recording of the threads, posts, members and active members I found the results pretty surprising. If you're interesting in statistics or just want to see how the website is going then check out these numbers (and excuse my dodgy excel graphs)...

Could the answer to our transport needs have been right in front of our faces all this time?

Conventional cars work by exploding fuel and air in a chamber to exert force on the pistons, but what if rather than using an explosion to provide that pressure on the piston, you just stored your ‘fuel’ at a constant high pressure. That’s the concept behind the air car, and it looks like a pretty promising technology. Like hydrogen the air is not actually the source of energy, it is the storage medium, but unlike hydrogen the production of an air powered car is surprisingly cheap. According to Wikipedia, without the need for a cooling, ignition or starter system these vehicles can be produced for approximately 20% cheaper than conventional car engines. That factor should not be underestimated since up until now, greener options have always seemed to come at a premium. Unlike battery electric vehicles a full tank of air will stay more or less full for a long time, they have very low discharge rates. Again compared to battery electrics the storage medium (tank) is not limited by a shelf life or number of cycles and therefore reduces waste. As the air expands in the engine it actually cools it, which can be used for passenger comfort. The car itself has no emissions since it just uses normal air (the air might actually end up cleaner because of filtration) and the compression can be done using renewable energy to make the entire system emission free. It can even run underwater if need be! This technology is honestly quite promising, but like the other ‘green’ options will this fail to stack up when it is looked at more closely?

The more I delve into this topic the more detail I want to address, so rather than cover all three energy storage options in this post I’ve decided to give a more detailed look at hydrogen. Keep a look out for a look at compressed air and battery electric in the next two weeks.

Hydrogen is the darling of the media, car manufacturers and oil companies alike. The general public seems fairly convinced that hydrogen vehicles are going to be the way of the future and a simple replacement for oil. Just about every car manufacturer has done at least a fuel cell concept, if not a ‘production ready model’ or even consumer testing. Hydrogen can be filled up in more or less the same way as conventional cars meaning that consumers can continue in their established transport patterns. It can be produced from a variety of different sources including electricity and has the potential to be created with zero emissions. Best of all the only thing to come out of the tailpipe of a fuel cell vehicle is water vapour.But is hydrogen really the miracle cure for oil dependence and transport environmental damage that everyone thinks it is?

Photo from GreenCarSite

Over the next three weeks I’ll be running a series on ‘green cars’. This week is Part 1 the Myth of the Green Car, next week I’ll be looking at alternative fuels and in the final post I’ll try and un-greenwash the Electric Car.

The Myth of the Green Car.

Can Cars be good for the Environment?

Electric, hybrid, efficient diesel, hydrogen and bio-fuelled vehicles are all the more frequently being advertised as the eco-friendly alternative by car manufacturers, but how much truth is in their claims? Are these legitimate green cars?