Charging scheme for "electric gas station"?

Oh, yeah? Amuse DIS! =:-O

;-) Rich

Dang, Glad to know I finaly have a purpose.

George H.

Why would I bother to do that?

John

Just imagine when one of them takes a dive from the fork truck. It would be fun enough to have it tip over and weld to the forks before exploding itself, but it would be just as interesting to have it fall all the way to the ground, and through a combination of breaking open and shorting out, release all of its energy in a nicely short time period.

In contrast, if this same procedure were employed for transporting fuel, it would be slightly less dangerous. The central reason batteries will never work, of course, is also why they're dangerous in comparision: fuel uses air, batteries have to take it with them.

Sure, you can make a rather large fuel explosion easier than you can explode even a rather large lithium ion pack, but as long as you don't spark it, that fuel just flows across the floor and evaporates, whereas if the battery fails, it's guaranteed to fail spectacularly.

The most obvious solution is to develop an electrically synthesized fuel: it's electric, it's carbon neutral, and it uses all of the existing infrastructure (cue the echoing "DUH"s!). A method is already known which fixes CO2 into carbonate, reduces it to formate, then formaldahyde and then methanol, which can be used as a direct feedstock for other hydrocarbons or burned in lightly modified engines today.

Although I suppose I'm still forgetting the niche factor. Is it still an electric car if it doesn't have a damn thing electric in it?

Tim

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properly

That is the deepest argument thus far.

At least you understand that rechargeable batteries must be charged... But of course, batteries do not have to be owned in order to be used and charged.

Yes, businesses have financial and overhead costs... Uhg.

Either you have been brainwashed, or you are just too old to think outside of the box.

The idea of a 500 pound battery rack and a fork truck sounds silly to me. Even if the battery pack were that heavy, a reliable removal/replacement system would be easy enough to devise.

Possible, with an old geezer at the wheel...

Have you ever designed and built anything mechanical, Timmy? Was the task extremely difficult for you?

But in the real world... Lithium ion battery-powered devices are EXTREMELY commonplace and their use is widespread.

There is no need, Timmy.

If you are so sure, Timmy, then no doubt you can provide pointers to opinions from scientists in that field who agree with you?

But in the real world... Lithium ion battery-powered devices are EXTREMELY commonplace and widespread. The technology is manageable. And of course, there are potentially better methods for handling current technology and potentially better energy storage devices on the way.

Apparently the subject is interesting enough for you all to troll me for answers...

Yup. When stopped (like in a traffic jam), they do not wear engine parts, produce heat, or waste energy.

then the solution is obvious

reduce traffic jams...

but seriously, i bet more energy could be saved by smart coordination of traffic signals to reduce congestion comapred to the effort to produce a workable electric car.

Mark

Nor does my Prius and it uses plain old gas.

G=B2

And no air-conditioning? Try that in Phoenix, on a July afternoon commute. THEN brag about it ;-) ...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson, CTO | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | | | Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat | | E-mail Icon at

It's not hard to build an ic engine that shuts down at red lights and starts up when you need it. Or build a micro-hybrid, like a Prius but with a smaller battery and an intermittent-duty electric motor... much less weight and overhead than a Prius-type machine. All it would take to make that sensible is $6 gasoline.

As the price of fuel rises, all sorts of evolutionary things will happen to ic engine drive trains, incrementally, without inventing and funding a whole new energy infrastructure.

Europeans already pay 2x or some such what we pay for gas, and they have adapted, and still mostly use liquid-fueled piston engines.

It is remarkable that the modern car engine has not fundamentally changed in 100 years: four stroke cycle, atomized fuel, pistons, rings, crank, poppet valves, spark ignition.

John

Does your Prius have incandecent lamps in the tail lights ? I thought it was odd they seem to have them. What a waste of energy sitting in traffic, with brakes on.

greg

That probably doesn't change fuel consumption by 0.02%. It's in the noise.

John

I agree. BMW & Audi in Europe both have red light engine shutdown with instant restart. It takes a bit of getting used to.

As do the Japanese and that is why their cars tend to be a lot more fuel efficient. It is only in America where fuel is dirt cheap that people buy vastly oversized urban assault vehicles. Japanese taxis moved to LPG ages ago because the air in Tokyo was getting impossible to breathe.

Done right you can get 60mpg from a modern diesel saloon and still have a respectable power to weight ratio. That aspect tends to suffer extremely badly with all of the existing battery technologies.

And I am rather sceptical about the lifetime of deep discharge high power batteries in regular use. Most of the rechargeables I have and especially those in portable PCs die a horrible death after 3-4 years. And I have seen too many problems with forklift truck battery maintenance where the sheer weight of the batteries for low centre of gravity is an advantage.

Regards, Martin Brown

With all possible marker lamps, plus stop lamps, your talking about several amps. Plus, it just does not seem right. How about headlights sitting in traffic.

greg

amps.

What? Maybe a 100 Watts if you let your imagination run away ?:-)

Remember... 20hp is greater than 15kW ...Jim Thompson