Monday, July 6. 2009

Static Car

Wading through my webcomics backlog, I came upon this delightful electric car strip from Kevin & Kell.

Of course, I can personally verify that electric cars don't go "vroom". They go "whoosh", "whizz", and "whirr", but not "vroom".

Posted by

Judebert

in Web Activities at 18:36 | Comments (2)

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Producing electric cars have no economical potential right now. I hope that soon they (the constructors, developers, scientists?) will project a battery able to sustain enough energy to ride for the whole day and easy to recharge. It is our problem that we don't know - we can't store energy we produce. And have to waste so much, because if we produce less energy than needed, we would have major blackouts all over the country. Because there are no blackouts (except California, in the hottest days) we produce more energy than we need. If we just could store it in some kind of batteries we could save trillions of trillions of dollars by now.

#1 Jose on 2009-08-11 07:55 (Reply)

I'm not so sure about the "no economical potential" bit. Many of the people who converted their own EVs say they'd have been happy to buy one, if it had been available.

Battery technology has always been the big problem. Lithium batteries are big enough to supply most driving needs, and hybrids with generators can pick up the slack there. But the batteries aren't the barrier to recharging: the wires are.

Most batteries will happily recharge in less time than it takes to refuel your car. My AGMs actually like a strong charge. But the amount of energy involved is so phenomenal, it would require a 3-foot-thick wire to transfer it.

Additionally, power companies regulate their turbines to burn less coal/oil/gas so they produce only the electricity necessary to meet the instantaneous demand. It's only when the demand exceeds the capacity that we get blackouts. However, it's true that solar, wind, and other alternative energy sources would benefit from better battery technology.

#1.1 Judebert (Homepage) on 2009-08-25 09:40 (Reply)

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