Electric Cars Are Only Another Scam

My daughter lives in San Fransisco and is an environmentalist (as I am). She bought a Honda Prius recently and her reasoning was perfect. The Honda Prius wasn't going to save her any money but it would enable her to get over the Oakland bridge in the fast lane. How you ask? Because TPTB (read sillly greenie SF Politicians) give special permits for hybrid cars so they can use the fast lane when the other lanes are snarled with traffic which is much of the day. Cars with these permits are worth about a thousand dollars more than unpermited cars.

Going "green" can get you to Berkley much faster!

Overunity and Magents, wind, and ocean power are making huge leaps in maximizing the energy produced/gained and will be the most cost effective. Look for information on Lt Col Tom Bearden, he is working in Tesla technology and overunity devices. There are a few visionaries like Ed Leetskalin, John Hutchinson, Nikola Tesla, that are dabbling in the "Cold fusion" or Zero Point Energy. Its not really free energy, you need at least some energy going in but the energy you get out can be up to 100 times more than what you put into it.

Google Vid Race to Zero Point

"Who killed the electric car?"

I am sure some of you have seen this documentary, but for those of you that haven't it is certainly worth trying to get hold of

Here's a taster:

www.youtube.com...

The film explores the creation and subsequent destruction of the battery electric vehicle in the United States, specifically the General Motors EV1 of the 1990s.

A large part of the film accounts for GM's efforts to demonstrate to California that there was no demand for their product, and then to take back every EV1 and dispose of them.

A few were disabled and given to museums and universities but almost all were found to have been crushed.

One explanation given is that the oil companies were afraid of losing out on trillions in potential profit from their transportation fuel monopoly over the coming decades.

[edit to add more info on film from it's wikipedia entry]

[edit on 14/4/2009 by alienanderson]

i am sure there will be some kinda backlash for battery-driven cars. Can you imagine having a HAZMAT team having to come out to every car accident due to the possibility of a leak? or the road damage caused by leaky, lowest-bidder-made batteries not to mention the other effects that are still unknown.

and yes, electric companies will feel exceptionally good about their prospects due to having a higher demand for their product. that is simple economics. likewise, we are in a throw-away society, world wide. Nothing is made to last longer than a few years these days because there is no constant money influx in things that are durable. Batteries have a shelf life and are made to fail. my grandfather used to remark how fantastic things were made during and after WWII. Till companies found out that they can bank on repeat customers in 5 years after their products "wear out." These days, things are built to fail at a certain rate to insure a steady, and timely resale. It stands to question that if things lasted longer and were more consistent in operation for well beyond the now-accepted time frame, if we would not be polluting as much.

i'd say our only true hope at coming close to anything self-sustaining like the proposed solar charge unit for a battery-based car would be cold fusion - but that is like pure communism (just a dream). Tesla, why oh why did the public not pay more attention to you...

i am sure there will be some kinda backlash for battery-driven cars. Can you imagine having a HAZMAT team having to come out to every car accident due to the possibility of a leak?

reply to post by Unnoan


You've hit on the current limitation for all hybrid cars for now. Perhaps in 10 years or more they will have the problem solved? But for now all the batteries are dangerous, caustic and have relatively short lives like 5 years. So don't buy a used hybrid without knowing how much battery you have left and the replacement cost!

Battery and car makers have to take extreme care to insure that the batteries stay cool and the components stay isolated so overheating and even fire and explosion don't occur. They all have this danger so at present it is unavoidable.

Off in the distant future we may be able to more reliably depend on these cars. Here's a good state of the art summary The Hybrid Car Battery: A Definitive Guide

No, I think that sounds more like the outrageous statements you'd heard from the oil industry. Just saying.

Currently electric vehicles make little or no sense. To produce the electricity necessary to charge these cars, we need to burn more coal which means the carbon footprint is similar to a car burning gasoline. And there are all kinds of inefficiencies such as the loss of power in converting burning coal to electricity, transporting the electricity through wires, the loss of converting back to DC to charge the batteries, and the loss involved in charging batteries.

If environmentalists and politicians would allow us to build more nuclear power plants this equation would change drastically. But that would be a different world where decisions would be made sanely and not because of party affiliation (There are lots of union workers mining coal and we must keep them happy no matter what the cost to the environment might be.)

Still I am very hopeful that we will see an efficient method of converting heat (as in anything above a couple hundred degrees below 0) into electricity in the coming years. Once we are able to achieve this, we will have unlimited power with no environmental impact. I hope to see/achieve this in the next few years.

- PM

Currently electric vehicles make little or no sense. To produce the electricity necessary to charge these cars, we need to burn more coal which means the carbon footprint is similar to a car burning gasoline. And there are all kinds of inefficiencies such as the loss of power in converting burning coal to electricity, transporting the electricity through wires, the loss of converting back to DC to charge the batteries, and the loss involved in charging batteries.

reply to post by Primordal


The only aspect of electric cars that makes sense is the fact that the fuel to generate the electricity is burned far from the city where the electric car is used. So the car doesn't sit in traffic spewing out hydrocarbons. That happens at the power plant! The people in the city benifit marginally by not having to inhale auto exhaust. Other than that it's a wash.

For those that think you can charge up your car with a photo electric array (solar pannels), it is impractical with current technology. It would take the total output of a very large array to charge a car. That kind of solar electric system would cost in the range of at least 30 to $40,000 and take up considerable space. The overall environmental costs of an array that size would be enormous also.

One last consideration for far in the future when just maybe electric cars will catch on and most people will have at least one to drive. That will drive the price of gasoline down to more reasonable levels. Right now gasoling is artificially high due to demand. I suspect that with greatly decreased demand it might get below $1 a gallon. But that wouldn't make you want to go out and buy an electric car either though!

I agree that fundamentally, saturating the market with electric cars isn't feasible, purely because:

1) It is just pushing the pollution back up the energy chain back to the power stations. Perhaps they can incorporate cleaner filters and what not, but they will still have to produce more power.

2) Cost of electric will increase to subsidise the OPEC cabal in some way.

3) Hybrid cars may be feasible but they will just charge the same for hydrogen as petrol.

However, i wanted to offer an alternative from what Formula F1 are doing. Some cars now use a Kinetic Energy Recovery System KERS.

This uses batteries and for every lap they get 6.6secs of boost (80bhp extra). The downside is it weighs 33Kg so the car suffers in corners. Only a few teams have adopted the KERS for this season.

Interestingly, one team is using a flywheel to harness the power of the engine and when the driver presses the boost button, the inertia is thrown back into the engine.

I believe that the solution is instant capacitance using Aerogel material. This could be used as a dielectric to store the power and has some amazing properties.

I believe that the solution is instant capacitance using Aerogel material. This could be used as a dielectric to store the power and has some amazing properties.

reply to post by PrisonerOfSociety

Aerogel is a substance I can get excited about. I first heard of it over 10 years ago. It went away because of cost but is back because a guy discovered how to make it 80% cheaper out of rice husk. The result is the lightest substance known to man made of silicon and air.

What is aerogel?

"Nicknamed "frozen smoke" because of its cloudy appearance, aerogel is made from silica, the basic ingredient in sand, and is over 95% per cent air by volume. The result is a nearly weightless and translucent material with a white powder that seems to float inside.
Aerogel can withstand mechanical pressure 2,000 times its own weight, making it suitable for bomb-proof panels. It also makes good sound-proofing material. Additionally, aerogel can also absorb oil spills and pollutants in the air - NASA fitted a space probe in 1999 with a mitt packed with the substance to catch the dust from a comet’s tail."

The new Maerogel is even better.

Some useful applications of Maerogel:

1. Dust capture for space applications - capture dust from a comet.
2. Because of being nearly weightless, aerogel is an excellent thermal insulator; particularly for the space crafts industry, where in the vacuum of space, Maerogel provides seven-fold better insulation then fiberglass. also applications in vacuum and heat insulation of hot water tanks, boilers, and refrigerators
3. It is a dielectric with potential applications as support in computer chips, active electronic materials and battery components. Also spacers in computer chips – double the speed of computers
4. Ultracapacitor technology
5. Nanocatalysts
6. Ultralightweight composites, sensors, lenses
7. Window panes – 1” layer of aerogel provides the same insulation value as 15 standard thermopanes
8. A promising material for translucent roofing and particularly potential applications in computer chips, active electronic
materials and battery components.

Someday we will be using Maerogels for cars, buildings, aeroplanes and electrical components and they will be incredible compared to what we now have! Maerogel - Rice Husk to Aerogel, Insulator - Halimaton Hamdan

Originally posted by THX-1138
...The entire world is limited. The game is to win at the expense of others who lose. Stop whining. Start winning.

If this was true, think how wealthy everyone was from 300 years ago! Why, there wouldn't have been ANY poverty, or ANY starvation!

Or, you are just absolutely wrong.

Originally posted by DEM0N
Magnetics is also very popular. Japan recently created a magnetic powered motorcycle. No waste, no harm done. Just beautiful magnets.

There is more to magnets than people think. Just have to know how to use em'.

[edit on 13-4-2009 by DEM0N]

Actually if you took a closer look you would see that it runs on electricity, not magnetic fields.

Originally posted by THX-1138
You would pay increasing rates for electricity.

If you think you would "save money" by using an electric car you are crazy.

I would love to own a electric vehicle. You could charge the cells with a solar power system at home. Once you buy the system, you receive your energy free from the sun, never having to pay for gas again, never having to make the trip to the gas station again. With solar cells getting cheaper everyday, it's only a matter of time before it will be very cost efficient, and outweigh the up-front cost.

As far as batteries polluting the environment, that could be reduced by using a Bedini radiant charger. This charger doesn't destroy the cell and make it worthless like a traditional charger which uses a brute force method and destroys the cell, so you have to go buy more, which in turn makes them more money. Super capacitors could also replace batteries, as they are making great strides in this area. The new super caps with barium titanate are great and have drastically reduced the size, while increasing the farads, not to mention capacitors take way less time to charge. Imagine solar stations paid for by the tax payer. Imagine these stations setup around the city. A person parks their car during work, charging their capacitors for the ride home. Heck you could charge by induction while driving down the road. The oil mongers wouldn't be to happy about this though.

We also have to factor in the maintenance of the electric engine. There is none. No oil changes, filter, no hundreds of parts to break. That in itself will save a person a lot of money.

[edit on 19-4-2009 by Freezer]

reply to post by Freezer

I would love to own a electric vehicle. You could charge the cells with a solar power system at home. Once you buy the system, you receive your energy free from the sun, never having to pay for gas again, never having to make the trip to the gas station again.

Can you give me information on a system that will do this? I haven't found it yet but it is the system I want!

The off the shelf technology (available to install today) can't do it economically. However, that doesn't seem to stop everyone from making claims otherwise! LOL.

Who says that electric cars must be powered by batteries? Why can't we have personally owned vehicles that connect directly to the grid like electric trains. If we were to set up a rail system where people could operate their personally owned vehicles, we could have a vastly more efficient transportation system. Using electrical power and computer control we could have a transportation system where we don't have to drive, and can spend our commuting time doing whatever we want in our vehicles.

Here is a link to a thread I created on the subject.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by plumranch

Having said all that I have one system that does make sense and that's ground source heat pumps. Ie. pump the heat out of the soil in your yard. You can heat a large house in a northern climate for less than a $100 a month however the cost of installation will stop most people. You'd probably need to take out a 2nd mortgage to pay the $20,000 plus for the system. I was able to put one of these systems in and it works great.

People thought I was nuts but I buried a grid of copper tubes under 6 feet of horse manure and just kept tossing more horse dung on top.

The savings on hot water was outstanding.


As for electric cars - people here in Sicily use them and think they're grand.
Work great - no complaints here...

Originally posted by Primordal
Currently electric vehicles make little or no sense. To produce the electricity necessary to charge these cars, we need to burn more coal which means the carbon footprint is similar to a car burning gasoline.

Not sure how true that is

Do you have any figures of carbon footprints for electric vs petrol cars?

I had a quick google but couldn't find any figures

reply to post by plumranch


All this stuff is already available, you just need an electric car.

You need a solar panel array, solar charge controller, and a bank of batteries, and then an inverter to step the 12 or 24 volts to 110 or 120v ac. Instead of plugging into your house, you plug it into an inverter. A lot of people who use solar use the 24v since it's more efficient. Many people are already powering their entire house with this setup, it's the same quality power that comes out of a house hold socket, less the power outages.. I even made a micro version of this to power my own lights in my house during power outages. I just plug my lamps into the socket. Charge during the day with my solar panel, and it cost's me nothing except the up-front cost of the system.

I however use a bedini motor to charge my batteries off solar, because the bedini motor will make the batteries last a very long time, as it doesn't brute force charge it. What kills a battery is not that the electrode plates have died, it's the brute charging force which traditional chargers use to quickly charge a battery. This in turn creates heat and off-gassing, and warping of the battery. Also sulfation which can build up on the plates rendering it useless. The Bedini charger knocks the sulfation right off the plates, which is why it can bring back seemingly dead batteries. I would recommend using bedini's commercial solid state radiant charger if you gonna do this. If you look at what people have said about it, you notice that not only does it not destroy batteries like conventional chargers, but it actually increases the amp-hours of the batteries. A lot of companies who use massive amounts of batteries are starting to take advantage of this because they realize how much money they could save.

There are online calculators which you plug in how much energy you need, and it will determine what amp-hour and amount of batteries you need. The charge controller will take the energy from the solar panels and charge the bank with an auto-shut off feature when the battery is full. It can be totally autonomous. The battery power then goes to an inverter which just increases the voltage to the same level as house hold current, which is 60 cycles at 120v ac. Understand now why gm destroyed the ev1?

Originally posted by 11andrew34
Lol electric cars will be mostly powered by coal for the next twenty years at least, probably more like 30-50 unfortunately. Oil burns cleaner than coal and always will. Electric cars before widespread nuclear, wind, and solar is putting the cart before the horse.

Actually, electricity comes mostly from coal and oil, but yes, I agree with you that electric cars are silly and ridiculous inventions if that's what you like to imply.

Which makes them equal to our current fossil fuel cars if not worse because of battery toxicity like others have mentioned before.

They are nothing but 100% hype atm, only silly and attention-hungry people will buy it.

[edit on 19-4-2009 by ahnggk]

Originally posted by ahnggk

Originally posted by 11andrew34
Lol electric cars will be mostly powered by coal for the next twenty years at least, probably more like 30-50 unfortunately. Oil burns cleaner than coal and always will. Electric cars before widespread nuclear, wind, and solar is putting the cart before the horse.

Actually, electricity comes mostly from coal and oil, but yes, I agree with you that electric cars are silly and ridiculous inventions if that's what you like to imply.

Which makes them equal to our current fossil fuel cars if not worse because of battery toxicity like others have mentioned before.

They are nothing but 100% hype atm, only silly and attention-hungry people will buy it.

[edit on 19-4-2009 by ahnggk]

Tesla Roadster -
0-60mph in 3.9 seconds.
248 hp / 276 ft/lbs of torque.
14,000 rpm redline.
92% average efficiency.
244 miles per charge, and if using solar, is free.

Yea, silly and attention-hungry. Total hype.. But if you like bending over at the gas pump, by all means, don't ever get an electric car.

Talk about toxicity..How much oil has spilled into the ocean...How much toxic smog is being exhausted into the air daily.. I personally don't believe in raping the earth of its oil, and then spilling it into the ocean killing countless fish and birds.

[edit on 20-4-2009 by Freezer]

reply to post by Freezer


Let me ask you something, where do you think the electricity you use to recharge your electric roadster comes from?

Solar power is another story, if you use solar or wind power to recharge your electric car that's a very good thing. But reality is, most of our electricity still comes from oil/coal

[edit on 20-4-2009 by ahnggk]