Throwing in the towel...electric cars are going to be the future.

In reply to SVreX:

For whatever reason, utilities seem to be nixing the peak/non-peak rates in some areas. At least for residential. I lost my non-peak billing about 2 years ago which sucked. I used to time it so I was running my clothes dryer during non-peak which saved me no small amount of money. I've started seeing the same as well in commercial facility bills I get related to my work.

The logistics of "smart roads" is daunting for sure, but not impossible. It would likely happen is areas where some of the infrastructure is already in place - for example in heavy urban areas where HOV lanes have been built (often toll) that run isolated from normal traffic lanes. These would be relatively easy to convert to "smart roads" if enough electric cars that could use them were sold. There are already a couple in the DC area. I could imagine California building a few as well. Still, it's a bit of a chicken-egg situation. I agree 50 years may be optimistic. At least under the current political climate. It was a different world back in the 30's thru 50's when all those big public works projects got pushed through.

Comparing the infrastructure to cell phones isn't quite the same. For one, there are still big gaps in coverage, and two, there is a big difference between scattering small towers about the country and completely re-working how people get around.

In reply to Ian F:

Interesting about the peak/ non peak thing. I thought the whole reason the utility companies pushed so hard for Smart Meters was so they could more accurately monitor and bill for electric usage.

Where we live (NW suburb of Baltimore) BGE is our electric provider, and we got the SM about a year ago. This last summer BGE started doing these energy savings days where you voluntarily reduce your electricity usage on specific days at specific times of the day and BGE gave something like a $1 credit per kW hour saved versus your normal electricity usage. The first day they did it, I went hog wild- turned down the fridges, turned off the dehumidifer in the basement, shut off the radio, shut off the water heater, etc. We ended up with a credit of over $20 for one day.

With the Smart Meters, supposedly they can throttle usage to more effectively manage the grid and prevent massive outages. I'm sure this could be used to deal with the EV charging issue, too. Some folks with the SM's have controls where they let the power company throttle their A/C and water heater automatically.

My provider, DTE, has a plan for EV charging that allows a discounted rate for charging overnight (8 cents per kWh) but a raised rate for daytime charging (18 cents). The normal rate is 12 cents, so the discounted rate is well worth it. The Leaf has a charging timer so we just set it to charge only when rates are discounted.

I personally do not see the impending rise of EV's as a "throwing in the towel" thing that we will just have to resign ourselves to. I am looking forward to what it means for motorsports as the technologies involved improve. Sure, they aren't as much fun as dino-burners yet, but the earliest waves of a new technology are never as good as the later iterations of the technology they eventually replace.

I look forward to when battery and charging technology becomes compact enough that we are making cars the same weight as they are now but with instant torque. Heck, locating all the powerplant mass low and in the middle can mean improved handling, plus improved interior space and safety in a smaller overall package, since we no longer have to build crumple zones around big hunks of metal in front of the driver's toes. We're not there yet, but that point is in sight and will come a lot sooner than smart roads.

In reply to Beer Baron:

Also this. When I hoon a normal car, I know that I am wearing out the transmission, clutch, engine, etc faster. Not to mention that it halves (or worse) my fuel cost. Hooning the Leaf results in none if that.

tuna55 wrote: In reply to Beer Baron: Also this. When I hoon a normal car, I know that I am wearing out the transmission, clutch, engine, etc faster. Not to mention that it halves (or worse) my fuel cost. Hooning the Leaf results in none if that.

How do you hoon a Leaf?

Flight Service wrote:

tuna55 wrote: How do you hoon a Leaf?

Torque.

That is all.

SVreX wrote:

Flight Service wrote:

tuna55 wrote: How do you hoon a Leaf?

Torque. That is all.

It's actually pretty fun to drive. It punishes the front tires, but can corner pretty well too.

In reply to tuna55:

Clearly, you are sending electrons to the wrong tires.

In reply to volvoclearinghouse:

PECO in PA has something similar to the Smart Meter thing as well. IIRC (it's been a couple of years since I got the literature), they install a separate meter on your A/C unit and shut it off during high-demand periods. You know... really hot days when you'd want to run your a/c. Essentially, it was rather vague about how much savings you might see. Bearing in mind, I have a small house and generally don't use a lot of power. My electric bill is only over $100 a few months each year and is occasionally under $60.

Personally, I've been planning to install a natural gas generator which would be connected to about 60% of the house circuits. I'd be curious if they would do peak-load shedding where they tell the ATS to kick over to the generator (they do this for some large commercial facilities with large co-gen plants). It would be easy for me to do this since I'm not planning to install a typical residential combination ATS/breaker panel but a separate ATS and sub-panel like I'm used to designing for commercial facilities. The combination set-ups seem moronic to me and aren't cheap enough to make up for the inflexibility. As I am somewhat planning to get an EV at some point, the generator panel would also feed a 220V charging circuit in the garage.

In reply to Ian F:

I believe the smart meter on the AC idea is that you're supposed to combine this with a powerful programmable thermostat, allowing you to bring down the temperature a few extra degrees before suspected shutdowns. This uses more electricity but you're paying less for it. In reality its probably not as much savings as advertised and just a crafty way to keep the POS grid limping along.

Resurrecting this thread to say I've joined the herd -- I signed the paperwork on a new Soul EV this afternoon. I'm not ready to give up on the exhilaration of driving performance cars, but I am so over driving my daily commute in needy 16 year-old cars.

NOHOME wrote: As much as I am not a fan of EVs, I have been looking around at the pieces that are in place and feel that it will be inevitable that batteries replace gasoline in 50 years or so. Farfetched? Maybe, but go ahead and laugh like when I told y'all back in 2005 that GM was going to go bankrupt.

With the recent developments from Google, Tesla, BMW, Mercedes, etc., I would suggest that the original post was not farfetched enough. While NOHOME was worried about EV appliances taking over and replacing our fun gasoline powered cars, we all missed the coming of autonomous cars. Pundits are even suggesting that in a decade or two it may be illegal to drive your own car, because by doing so you'd put your self and others at risk instead of relying on a nearly infallible autopilot system.

nderwater wrote: nearly infallible autopilot system.

Whut.

I trust computers about as much as I trust a flaming bag on my porch. All they do is break.

There's an awful lot of Big Brother potential with electricity, computers, the Nanny State, and advanced autopilot systems.

RossD wrote: I'm waiting for some crazy 'battery' technology to come along. It might just be incrementally better, but I'm hoping during my lifetime, we have a huge increase in storable power.

the batteries are coming. Right now they just figured out Lithium Aluminum. The big issue with them was the electrodes.. but they solved that with graphite. They should prove to be more powerful then Li-ion but without the problems with bursting into flames.

On another note.. windmills and solar -can- generate power at night and with no wind. They are getting ready to install a2.9 million dollar battery here at the wind and solar farm that Atlantic City has for just such occasions.

Wind power without the wind?

tuna55 wrote: In reply to Beer Baron: Also this. When I hoon a normal car, I know that I am wearing out the transmission, clutch, engine, etc faster. Not to mention that it halves (or worse) my fuel cost. Hooning the Leaf results in none if that.

Clearly, you do not understand what is going on in your Leaf.

Grizz wrote:

nderwater wrote: nearly infallible autopilot system.

Whut. I trust computers about as much as I trust a flaming bag on my porch. All they do is break.

This. I can start rattling off the places that a wireless autonomous system won't work... all I can say is when I'm driving my old fashioned dino powered car that should be illegal and I meet up with some bleeding edge types stuck in a real cold place because their autonomous vehicle quit for lack of signal, I'm gonna laugh and keep going.

I'm even more sure now that EVs are the (near) future than I was when this thread started. There are battery technologies that will hit the shelves in the next few years that seem like Star Trek technology compared to what's available now. I'll stick to my estimate of 9-10 years for the majority of new car sales to be EVs.

I'll make some more predictions now:

In 20-30 years, low-end sport compacts will have 500hp+ and midrange or high-end sports cars will have 4-digit horsepower supercars (which will be a tiny cottage industry compared to today due to economic reasons) will be pushing 5 digits and none will have ICEs, they'll be too much dead weight by then. Even common grocery-getters will have more than enough power...the V6 Camry was just the beginning.

In 30 years, there will be no ICE semi trucks in production. Not even Australian road trains. These will be the last production ICE vehicles.

I think a lot of the automotive industry is about to be blindsided by these changes, most of them have the same mode of thinking as the tech companies who thought the Internet was some kind of passing fad in the '90s.

SVreX wrote: There's an awful lot of Big Brother potential with electricity, computers, the Nanny State, and advanced autopilot systems.

I'm with you - I have zero interest in giving up my right to drive. But with more than thirty thousand people being killed in auto crashes each year, and two million more people being injured, it's no big stretch to foresee that if autonomous vehicles work, and are proven to substantially reduce accident rates, that they may at some point become mandatory.

GameboyRMH wrote: In 30 years, there will be no ICE semi trucks in production. Not even Australian road trains. These will be the last production ICE vehicles.

Mad Max would be so much less badass if he drove a Leaf.

In reply to GameboyRMH:

I think both of your predictions are very, very wrong.

Pretty soon, people will realize how pointless all of the power really is for most of the market- people are paying huge money for performance they don't use at all. Maybe the very high end sport compacts will be 500hp. I personally see the shift going to less power and more fuel economy. Hybrids and partial hybrids will be the way to go.

And there still needs to be some rather quantum changes in electricity systems before ICE's completely go away.

For instance, 500hp = 373kw = 373,000 watts. So if a battery had a 1000V potential, it would need 373A to be 500hp. Or 100V would be 3,730 Amps. Think about that for a while. Just for a battery to put that kind of power out.

Plus- what happens when someone decides to short + to -? One that can put out that kind of power. Gas is dangerous, sure- but it's quite different.

Not that those things can't be solved. But I still don't see them solved in 20-30 years.

As much as I like HP.. (and who doesn't?) but do we really need that much power in our dds? Does the 300hp camry really need to exist?

I remember having a lot of fun in a modified ACVW that might have broken 100hp.. not to mention a 68hp Hyundai that was more than adequate for me to almost lose my license.

alfadriver wrote: In reply to GameboyRMH: I think both of your predictions are very, very wrong. Pretty soon, people will realize how pointless all of the power really is for most of the market- people are paying huge money for performance they don't use at all. Maybe the very high end sport compacts will be 500hp. I personally see the shift going to less power and more fuel economy. Hybrids and partial hybrids will be the way to go.

As you say, people like to have more power even if they don't use it at all - and with EVs, there is very little downside to increasing power output capability. You can have your cake and eat it too. It's not like an ICE where you have to sacrifice big chunks of efficiency and use uncommon or expensive parts to get more power. So with EVs, people can finally have their bragging rights or quick highway merges with practically no downside at last.

So I think everyday sedans will have 250-300hp, and common models with sporty aspirations (like, say, a futuristic base Civic/ Impreza) will have 300-400. That's the point where I think people will be so deep into the silly zone that demand for even more will drop off, but they're not about to get all rational about how much power their car should have.

My Grandfather In Law was asking me about the Leaf over the weekend. He asked "is this the future?", so I naturally thought of resurrecting this thread. I see I'm too late.

yes. Yes I do.

The range of the EV-1 is ridiculously short as compared to a Leaf or a Spark or whatever. The newer cars are also bigger and heavier and like actual cars. The progress being made right now shows that range is quickly going to be addressed. Cars like the Tesla shows that EVs can make plenty of power for the market. If in ten years time you can buy an EV that has a 500 mile range, would you? I would. How about in fifteen years, and an 800 mile range?

It doesn't even really matter how fast it charges for the vast majority of the population with range like that.

Yes. I believe these are the future.

In reply to GameboyRMH:

There are a lot of downsides to high output electrics. Read my post again.

500hp = 1000Vx348A = 100Vx3,480A. I may be not all that familiar with electric, but that seems very, very far from easy or trivial. From the storage system being able to deliver it to the motor...

Not to be flippant, but you should seriously consider working here in the auto industry to solve these problems. We need that kind of optimism.

But I don't see the need to have 250hp cars these days. And I say need, not want.

One other note- in terms of pure ability to make volumes of cars like this- EV's will be sourced via the current auto industry. I think.