Your Electronic Life - A Green Note on Exciting Transportation
May 21, 2008
Over the last few years there has been an increasing furor over global warming. The first arguments (generally by those who felt most threatened financially by the proposed solutions) were that it wasn’t occurring. Now they are forwarding the idea that “This is natural and mankind is not the cause.” I am not here to argue about the source of global warming. I am here to mention newsworthy items involving your Electronic Life which apply.
Some of the actions espoused to handle global warming are pretty much the same ones I saw in the 60s and early 70s about energy self-sufficiency. I have no arguments with any of them. I believe that many of the problems various societies on Earth face today are directly linked to not having sufficient cheap energy. When one has sufficient cheap and clean energy one can do many things.
Because transportation is one of the major uses of energy (and therefore a major source of global warming), one way to start toward energy self-sufficiency while still not contributing much to global warming is to use electrically-powered vehicles.
There are many arguments about how much this will save, but the primary thing is that electrically powered vehicles do not have to depend on fuel sources which contribute to global warming. You can talk about the “poor” general efficiency of the electrical grid (roughly 50%) in supplying electricity for a battery-powered vehicle (that vehicle battery storage/usage cycle costs you another 10% in efficiency, for a total of about 40% efficiency) but you have to remember that gas-powered vehicles are only about 20%-25% efficient, so the total overall efficiency of 40% is still a big decrease in energy cost, being almost twice as efficient!).
The major still largely unresolved problem with electrical vehicles has been that most suffer from range and acceleration limitations. Batteries are just not very “energy-dense” (unlike liquid fuels).
Most humans are very intolerant of anything that limits their “God-given right” to do what they want, when they want it. The usual electric car problems of poor acceleration and low range directly cut across that (and the fact that one cannot currently recharge a battery pack as fast as one can fill a tank with more fuel).
Fuel cells are one way to handle the problem of quick electrical recharging. If you only get 100 miles to a fueling, it still is not too great of a hassle if it only takes five minutes to refuel. Having large enough electrical motors and an electrical source capable of high power handles the problem of low acceleration. Many traffic control studies have shown that jack-rabbit starts don’t really save a lot of time over a commute. And most people never need to go more than 200 miles in a day of travel (the average daily use of an auto is under 40 miles). Thus an electrical vehicle with that kind of range (100 miles) is a feasible alternative.
You can now buy an electrical vehicle which is both high performance and has a long daily travel range. This is the Tesla Roadster. Production has just started and all cars are sold out for the rest of this year.
The Tesla roadster is aimed at the high-performance crowd and does hit that target market well. It’s based upon a Lotus chassis and weighs a bit more than the Lotus built upon that chassis. It also has more acceleration then the “sister” Lotus.
Now you can keep your God-given right to a powerful car and be environmentally responsible.
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A good read Doc!
I know here in Australia there are some long distances between the towns and cities, so the need for more efficient batteries that recharge quickly is essential (even though we have plenty of sunshine)
I am still a fan of cars running around on the oil out of deep fryers, everything will smell like fish and chips!