The Length of Time to Recharge an Electric Car...

Okay, you are driving down to Florida from New York or Canada. You want to buy up some of that Florida ocenafront real estate that the panicked have evacuated before being killed by the oil spill.

You have an electric automobile. The problem with alternative energy like electric and solar and wind is that energy can't be stored. Not like the gasoline in your old gasoline clunker automobile can be stored.

You get about forty miles to the recharge. Maybe more from the batteries that are being built and assembled in South Korea. Maybe you get sixty miles to a recharge.

You are driving some 1300 plus miles to arrive in Florida. You have to stop every forty to sixty miles to recharge.

How long do you have to stand there beside your automobile before you have been recharged enough to drive another forty to sixty miles toward Florida?

Can you attach a windmill to your automobile for extra mileage?

Are you prepared to purchase an airline ticket on a plane that is solar powered at 35,000 feet?

I'm curious how this alternative energy thing works for you people. Please enlighten me. I feel as though I'm in the dark ages whenever I watch a NASCAR event, and those vehicles are running on Sunoco fossil fuel.

Help me understand.

dude ill star you for the buying property idea

technology's come a long way

I did some checking on line just now.
120 volt power source=10 to 12 hours
240 volt power source=5 to 6 hours

New systems are said to take less time but are now on the market yet.


On the windmill idea, the answer is NO. The drag created by the wind mill would eat up more power than the wind mill would ever make. The idea has been tried many times.

[edit on 7/31/2010 by fixer1967]

Originally posted by fred call
You are driving some 1300 plus miles to arrive in Florida. You have to stop every forty to sixty miles to recharge.

That's a wrong proposition to discuss. My cell phone has Bluetooth, but I don't expect it to shoot death rays at assailants, in case of robbery. Currently electric cars come with a caveat and it's silly to ignore that caveat.

My commute is slightly less than 10 miles and I'd be happy to drive an electric car to work. For trips to FL, I'll buy a plane ticket.

1300 miles at
50 miles per charge.

26 recharges at
10 hours to recharge.

11 days (10.8 or 260 hours) just for battery charging for a 1300 mile trip.


1300 miles divided by 260 hours comes to 5 miles per hour and that does not include the drive time. You could walk faster.

Originally posted by fred call
Can you attach a windmill to your automobile for extra mileage?

I'm curious how this alternative energy thing works for you people.

Not a windmill, it's called a "hybrid". You get some of the advantages of electric but you could still drive to Florida in a pinch since you have an onboard generator to recharge the batteries. Even braking recharges the batteries.

Originally posted by buddhasystem
My cell phone has Bluetooth, but I don't expect it to shoot death rays at assailants, in case of robbery.

I wonder which cell phone has that? It could come in handy, but I'd settle for a beam that could burn a hole in the tire of the guy who pulls right out in front of me so that I have to slam on the brakes hard to avoid hitting him, I don't want to kill him, just give him a flat.

well, i just hope that the future will bring super-capacitor batteries that can be recharged in a matter of minutes + will run for 200-300 miles at least before recharging. People are working on this!

However, before we get this fixed, the ONLY way of travelling with no fossil fuels , it would be the old good train. Trains should run between major cities with 200 miles per hour, and you should be able to load your car into the train and why not recharge it while travelling. This method is started being proposed and even applied in several EU countries, however it is (for now) applied for trucks .



[edit on 31-7-2010 by Romanian]

reply to post by fred call


You have to change more than just your vehicle and the infrastructure around you has to change as well.

Catching a train would make most sense for your journey. The train could even carry your vehicle.

An electric vehicle could perform much better than you describe and charge times could be much faster. I also suspect that the charge times you stated are based on the maximum power of a single standard mains socket in 230 and 110V regions. Charge times could be much faster but without massive mains grid change it couldnt be as fast as is possible.

The best interim solution is probably the type of hybrid mentioned by arbi, where a small diesel generator running at peak efficiency charges the batteries. The performance of such a vehicle could be much better than the power of the generator for intermediate requirements as in normal driving.

I would like my Bluetooth devices to communicate with each other properly first. If than can be achieved then the death rays would be nice.

Edit: the poster above just said similar . In the uk we can cross the channel to france in a train you drive on and off.


[edit on 31/7/2010 by LightFantastic]

So, you're all saying that Lance Armstrong on a bicycle can go from New York to Miami faster than you can drive an electric car the same distance.

Wow. Still don't get the infatuation. Just get a bicycle. Save yourself some money.

There has been a lot of discussion in recent times about hybrid and electric vehicles on a couple of the motoring forums I am a member of.
The problems I see right now are:

1. Current (forgive the pun) technology.
2. Infrastructure to support charging
3. Clean energy to support the above
4. Limited range
5. Cost of hybrid and electric vehicles compared to modern clean petrol and diesel engined cars.

So.....

Current Technology.
It is coming on in leaps and bounds but I just do not see it as a viable alternative at this time to fulfill a mass market transport system.

Infrastructure to support charging.
Who is going to pay for this to be put in place? As a driver of a normal internal combustion engined car, I do not want to be hit with more taxation to install this for what is, right now, a limited market and of no use to me personally. This would involve regularly spaced charging locations along all major motorways and trunk roads, as well as places or work and at home. Fine if you have off-street parking in which to do the charging!

Clean energy to support the above.
I remember seeing an article a while back discussing the adoption of electric vehicles for the East London 2012 Olympic games (is the world going to end before or after? ) and how the power would come from clean hydro-electric generation in Scotland. This is, of course, nonsense as any power from this source is channeled into the national grid, along with all other sources.
I also have a problem with the "carbon footprint" generated by the production of the vehicles before they have even left the factory. Most cars these days are assembled from parts that can come from all over the world and are transported by dirty airtravel or by sea, to the point of assembly. If they were made from parts all manufactured within a short radius of the assembly plant, itself using clean energy, then maybe they can at least come off the production line with some green credentials.

Limited range.
Hybrid vehicles have the definite edge here, with their diesel or petrol motors charging the batteries, but pure electric vehicles just don't cut it for many people. Ideally, these would best serve those who live and work within the confines of large towns or cities, but again a limited number only.
A lot of people driving company cars now get hybrids as part of their employers green image. However, the style of driving needs to change to get the most from these cars. Driving them above the speed limits with hard acceleration will use just as much fuel as a pure diesel or petrol engined car. Perhaps more so as the engines used are smaller and thus need a heavier right foot and higher revs to get the same performance the drivers previously experienced in their oily predecessors!
The Tesla, for example, always seems to be touted as a fine example of this new technology. Yeah, it's perhaps a cool fast sports car, but drive it as such and your range will drop by about two thirds.

Cost of hybrid and electric vehicles compared to modern clean petrol and diesel engined cars.
The pricing I am seeing for some of the current crop of these hybrid and electric vehicles puts them out of reach of many of the average motorists. For the price of a basic spec Toyota Prius, I can get a more practical car that will give me close to or better MPG figures and cost several thousand pounds less - where is the incentive for me to part with my hard earned cash?

In summary, it's not that I am opposed to such things, it's just that a lot more thought and effort needs to be put into the requirements for supporting green motoring, not only by the manufacturers but by the government too.
The driving public also needs to change attitudes as well in order to adopt these new vehicles. For the last couple of years I have adopted a more relaxed, slower driving stress free attitude to my daily commute. The advantage has been a marked increase in fuel economy and I am not bothered by everyone flashing past me on the motorways, going hell for leather well above the national speed limit. I don't mean I drive like a nervous Nun but a little less speed, gentler acceleration etc sure does help with the increasing costs of driving. I'm quite happy to continue doing that and driving an older car rather than pay to drive an illusory "green" vehicle.