OT: Electric cars; how green are they?

[Tim Streater]

A few hundred watts only, IIRC. Plenty to power a spacecraft electronics.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember The Natural Philosopher saying something like:

20million electric bicycles in China, from what I've heard. There's a small but steadily growing market for them in Europe - generally hub motors with LiFePo battery packs, either complete bikes or built from ebay or direct-bought wheel and battery kits. I've looked seriously at LiPo RC packs for powering my 750W bicycle, but eventually decided on Bosch toolpacks as a modular system, with less farting around and a safer chemistry. LiPo is marvellous, but does take a good deal of care in its use and it's not unknown for a user to get it wrong and destroy the pack (sometimes along with the garage/shed).

[The Natural Philosopher]

Oddly enough, there are less and less reports of that in the model aircraft community. Chemistries have got better.

I can recommend the LiFePo stuff though. heavier but far less tricky and fragile.

[The Natural Philosopher]

well grid to wheel is probably 90% then.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember The Natural Philosopher saying something like:

The reason I went for the Bosch toolpacks is because they use Konion cells, LiMn chemistry. They need no balancing or battery management system, can be heavily loaded when needed (not as good as LiPo, but adequately for my use) and are more or less a fit-and-forget system. They also seem to bounce back from abuse that would kill a LiPo or LiFePo pack. Plus, I can easily upgrade by adding more packs over the next while.

[Roger Chapman]

The main advantage for trams to those promoting public transport is the same as they derive from bus stops in hazardous places (as helpfully listed in the highway code) and bus only lanes. They disrupt the progress of private transport. Trolley buses are a much cheaper, less intrusive and more practical alternative to trams.

Not as easily as they continue to nick the railway's signal wiring. With any luck taking down live overhead wires would fry a good few of them.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I'll bet the MPG is too.

[tony sayer]

Perhaps the cost of Oil will make it so..

Can't see why not..

Unless we can crack the onboard Primary power problem and soon...

[tony sayer]

In article , harry scribeth thus

This or something very similar may not rely on that as such.

Even so that in itself may not be an insurmountable problem...

[Colin Stamp]

Looking at the Wikipedia page on the Tesla for example, it once managed

23.9kWh/100mile battery-to-wheel which they equated to 33.6kWh/100mile plug-to-wheel.

I make that 71% plug-to-battery, let alone plug-to-wheel.

This info appears to come from Tesla, so I would think they were using the most efficient charge regime - certainly not the fastest.

Cheers,

Colin.

[dennis]

I bet the huge troll can't explain anything wrong with what I said.

[Adrian]

Colin Stamp gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

Mmm. Yet they always quote the high-current charge times...

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Induction loop audio devices are horrendously inefficient?

[Tony Bryer]

They are advertised here, max 200W to be treated as a regular bike. A while back there was one with regenerative braking.

[Tony Bryer]

Living in what is perhaps the tram capital of the world, trams have a lot going for them. Like trains, they need a lot less energy to move them, they can take a lot of people - the newest 5-section 'Bumblebee' trams here take 240 people. Also when it comes to trying to persuade people to move to PT, for some reason trams are acceptable to a certain group of people who would not travel by bus.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Tony Bryer saying something like:

The 200W limit in Oz is daft, imo. A much more sensible limit would be

350W-ish, to allow for a half-decent rate of progress, without taking the piss. European limit is generally 250W, but there are ways around it - some motors well exceed that on burst, but the nominal rating is legal. Regen braking is an option on many of the kits, but it's not very reliable (the regen controllers tend to stuff up more often than straight controllers) or very worthwhile, from all I've heard/read.

[The Natural Philosopher]

tesla is nowhere near as efficient as it could be, Its actually quite crude.

Its is essentially built from off the shelf stuff.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Probably better than a pious anyway.

[Matty F]

Zinc-air batteries have three times the energy density of lithium-ion cells, and zinc is a hell of a lot cheaper than lithium:

recently received a $5 million federal Energy Department grant to research zinc-air batteries, which proponents say have three times the energy density of lithium-ion cells and use a chemical element - zinc - that is less expensive than lithium and more widely available.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I'd hope a bike would be.