Cambell Live - DIY electric car. Inspired?

[Badjelly]

Greenie bullshit.

Whatever. Try to put some numbers on what you're saying and it might be worth responding to.

Actually, diesel engines can do 50%.

I did look up the link. That's one big diesel! It wouldn't fit in Finn's SUV. The article also says most automotive and small aircraft engines have 25-30% thermal efficiency.

So basically, you're agreeing with me: with a whomping big engine, either diesel or gas/steam turbine, you can turn fossil fuels to motive power and/or electricity with an efficiency of 50%.

But you can't achieve efficiencies anything like that from an internal combustion engine in a vehicle, particularly with a petrol engine. So if you want to do better, your options are:

* Diesel: more efficient on part power.
* Hybrid: have the engine running at full power or not at all.
* Electric: use your whomping big, efficient engine to generate electricity and get the energy to the car via transmission lines, batteries etc.

[Hoon]

The car batteries were most likely made from lead that was dug up by a big diesel digger, trucked to a refinery in a diesel truck, smelted by a coal fired smelter, shipped to you in an oil powered ship, and distributed around the country in big trucks.

Yep much the same way a tank of petrol is produced and delievered to your car. The big difference is that this is a 3-5 yearly cost, not weekly.

I agree that at this point in time there is not enough benefits to justify changing to an electric vehicle. The advantages would need to be substancial to convince me and at the moment they are (arguably) only comparable.

However fossil fuels are running out, oil prices just keep getting higher and theres the pollution thing too. We need an alternative and EV looks to be a step in the right direction. The combustion engine is in its twilight years whereas EV is at its beginning so still has a lot of unlocked potential to offer.

So maybe not now but definately in the near future as the technology improves and the balance starts to swing.

[Fooman]

More fuel to the fire: I was at a seminar sometime this year on the future of NZ energy reserves (basically gasification of Southland lignite), and was talking to a guy from the EECA. He pointed out that using existing wave/tidal power plants, as recently installed in Portugal, and everyone converting to electric vehicles based on current technology (e.g. GM's Impact), NZ's vehicle fleet energy requirements could be meet by 150 square kilometres of wave/tidal power. Or approximately 0.01% of NZ's coastline. That is with inefficient transmission of electricity factored in (rather than conversion of electricity to hydrogen to power fuel cells etc). Capital costs would be quite high of course.

The other thing to consider with the above, is that when it was operating as a source of petrol (rather than methanol), the Synfuels Plant at Motonui major effect on the NZ economy was halving the balance of payments deficit from supplying automotive fuel domestically (via converted Maui gas) rather than importing from overseas. As it was doing this during a rather unstable economic period (mid to late eighties), the stabilising effect it had (on the order of 500 million dollars a year) was worth more in the long term than the large capital cost of the plant (think big). Since it stopped producing fuel, NZ went back to importing almost all it's fuel again.

Cheers,
FM