An electric Porsche at MIT
A group of MIT students have retrofitted a Porsche 914 with batteries in an effort to show that electric cars could be viable in the near future.
The students, led by senior Emmanuel Sin, removed the gas engine from the car and replaced it with an electric motor. The motor runs on 12 lithium-ion batteries from Valence Technologies, one of a group of companies trying to bring lithium-ion batteries to cars. Lithium-ion batteries can hold more energy than lead acid batteries, but they can be dangerous. Remember those exploding notebooks?
Sin (second from left) and students installing batteries.
(Credit: MIT)The students hope to conduct a number of tests and test drives in the next few weeks. According to their estimates, the car should have a top speed of 70 to 100 mph and it will run 100 miles before needing a recharge. It will take about four to five hours to recharge the batteries in full. The car, being electric, won't emit fumes from the tailpipe.
Those figures above underscore the promise and peril of electric cars. Electric cars will generally emit far fewer greenhouse gases than regular cars, even when fumes from the power plant that provides electricity to recharge them is factored in. And they can be quite zippy.
But a range of 100 miles is problematic--not many Americans buy cars that can't get them too far out of town. If you had to leave San Francisco to do a quick meeting in San Jose, Calif., you might not make it back.
Then there is the charge time. If an owner wants to go away on a weekend, who wants to double the travel time with a four-hour charge? (However, the 100 mph maximum is probably acceptable to most drivers.)
Batteries are also expensive. Even advocates of plug-in hybrids say that you can't currently justify putting more batteries in your Prius by claiming you'll save money on gas. You'd have to drive several thousand miles before hitting breakeven. The batteries to convert a car like a Honda Accord might run $30,000, Ian Wright, designer of the X-1 electric sports car, has estimated. Still, battery advocates say prices will decline.
The Porsche, by the way, was donated by Yang Shao-Horn, a professor of mechanical engineering at MIT and a specialist on advanced batteries. She and her husband bought it on eBay.
Rather than putting a power plant inside every single automobile manufactured, it is more efficient in terms of scale and manufacturing to simply store the energy created in an electric generation facility elsewhere. Then you can also chose how you want to generate the electricity -- coal, nuclear, solar, wind, hydro, and who knows what else the future holds. But all a car should do is temporarily store the electricity -- it shouldn't have to generate it.
It's the KISS principle. That's something the oil companies *don't* want, because it would negate their monopoly on distribution of fuels, turning it over to a competing industry, the electric companies, or even worse, the consumers who can have their own source of electricity. That's why they are so fascinated by and focused on Hydrogen powered vehicles -- it perpetuates their monopoly.
Electric cars work TODAY; sure their range may not be great, but they are more than good enough for most commutes. And with mass production come better efficiencies and better technology. Fuel cells are 10 to 20 years out. Hydrogen distribution may be even further out. Why wait for a promise that may not come, when a solution is available today?
Has the Ford "Think" been forgotten ? These little electrics also came close to being shredded, but were returned to the home of their manufacture, Norway. It is my understanding these electrics are still in use.
Little electrics, such as these, would be a start to prepare the way for more advanced and higher tech electrics. including the MIT creation.
As the previous author pointed out, electric can be, generated in remote locations from a large variety of fuels,
and "non" fuels; solar, garbage methane, hydro etc.
Community charging stations would be set up, as they were during the days of the EVs in CA, sites such as parking lots, malls, etc. Plug in at your destination, and would be charged when you are ready to leave work, or leave the shopping mall.
I have the distinct feeling there are some of our "fathers" do not want the US public to have the use of electric cars. Am I wrong ?
With the demise of the EV-1, did progress move backwards?
This is just a beginning. The costs are currently high for Lithium batteries, but the raw materials are cheap and improvements in manufacturing is likely to make them cost competitive soon. Electricity is a very cheap fuel, and will eventually replace petroleum fuels for automotive use. On the other hand, H2 fuel is much more expensive and will never be able to compete.