Oil filter change in old car - how often?

[Lieutenant Scott]

Good point.

Although how heavy are these pancakes?

[The Natural Philosopher]

lighter than a steel axle for many values of 'pancake'

Leccy cars are fighting weight all the way..Titanium, carbon fibre, aluminium...expense...

[tony sayer]

I

Well...

One day perhaps the perficke electrical storage system may be invented..

One day they might see the need for all the power thats going to need and might just start building the nuclear plants to cope with that rather than pissing it away with subbed solar and windymills..

One day they might just perfect a type of prime power engine for vehicles that perhaps burns, reacts, or converts something that releases no pollutants and is easy to store and carry like petrol..

One day perhaps but seemingly not too soon;(...

[Tim]

Yeahbut, if electrical storage is dramatically improved, renewable energy sources make more sense, not less.

Tim

[Dave Plowman (News)]

The holy grail. Light, compact and reasonably priced batteries. 'They've' spent an awful lot looking for such a thing. Yet a car with a normal engine still uses a lead acid type hardly changed in over 100 years.

[tony sayer]

Do you seriously think that renewables alone can power the motor transport needs of the country?.

Or even go someway to achieve that?...

[Tim]

No, do you? I didn't say or imply that. Go back and read the thread in the right order.

Tim

[tony sayer]

I rather doubt if anyone's given a thought to how much energy it would take to power UK transport needs. A damm sight more then what windymill's could produce...

[Dave Plowman (News)]

And, of course, if there was a big swing to electric powered cars, HMG would soon find a way of replacing the lost taxes from petrol etc sales.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Or more to the point, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

"if electrical storage is dramatically improved"

The society would be totally transformed. Why has this not happened>?

Because no technology exists within the known laws of physics and using elements or compounds that are in the periodic table that can allow this 'if' to become 'when'..

Energu is 'stored' in kinetic, potential, chemical and nuclear forms. Or in small quantities in electrical fields.

None of these offer simple conversion and easy storage beyond chemical.

The energy density of direct electrochemical storage (batteries) is a function of the molecular weight and the energy in the outer electron shells. The best ration is lithium, bar none. Nothing beats lithium Lithium is not good enough. And there isn't enough of it. End of better batteries pipe dream.

Kinetic energy is dangerous..flywheels spinning at 500,000 RPM? Made out of what?

Potential energy is VAST. Think raising the whole north sea 500 meters to power europe for a month.

What's left? straight chemical energy, like coal or diesel fuel. Good. But its still fossil or has to be synthesised at rotten efficiencies .

Fuel cells? Burn FUEL. And if made small enough and light enough no more efficiently than a diesel engine.

Supercapacitors? well a battery powered electric model aircraft can fly for an hour or more. I think the record for a supercapacitor is 30 seconds. Nuff said. Understand the nature of insulators, capacitors and the MV/m rating of even the best and you understand why THAT wont save us either.

What's left? well a kg of fissile material is enough to power you for life..if ONLY it didn't need a reactor the size of a church to do it safely...

Or carry on dreaming ..

PERHAPS CERN or the LHR will come up with a sub quantum twist that in 50 years will mean we have more energy than we know what to do with from some level of reality we don't yet understand or even think exists. That is FAR more likely than a 'better battery' coming along. Mind you all that will happen then is someone will make a bloody bomb out of it.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I am sorry to say that they have. At least David Mackay , and I, have, in great detail.

Somewhere around 150-300GW to run the entire country (excluding imported energy intensive goods and mass immigration) depending on the efficiency of the transport drive trains and storae systems.

A damm sight more then what

Actually just about feasible if the storage existed, and the entire country was covered in them to the exclusion of all living areas and open spaces, radar, terrestrial TV, a lot of mobile phones, and most of the people..and the chinese would give them to us and install them for noting rather than 10x the nations GDP in loan repayments for the next

1000 years.

BUT the storage does not, and nor will it ever. Not in any way of storing it currently known to mankind anyway.

The green solution is to have a FEW windmills and a FEW battery cars for the Green Party, and everyone else..well they just die. Simples!

[tony sayer]

I wonder if the way forward is some sort of "inductive" power pickup along main roads and motorways with battery/hybrid backup when "off gird"

[The Natural Philosopher]

As long as you don't lie down on a road with a pacemaker..

[Doctor Drivel]

Look at the work of Nick Tesla. Many of his patents were made secret and taken off the record.

I posted about the Toshiba battery. 20 years ago cell phones resembled a brick because of the battery size. Within a few years the battery was minuscule. There was little advancement over the years in batteries as the "pressing" demand was not there. Arguably there was always a demand. Amazing what they can do when they want to.

Mways are so packed they were "think tanking" that cars would need to be on a rolling conveyor belt or chained together. The cars would not use their own power - so back to the train. They could plug in along the way and use batteries after.

Modern batteries with lightweight, insulated body with reflective glass can go 300 miles.

[Doctor Drivel]

The way to reduce energy is to design communities on a human scale so cars are rarely needed. Cities to have undergrounds just below the surface on rubber wheels - as per Paris, just jump down a few stairs to the platform. Towns can have supercapacitor buses. Also built to superinsulation and passive solar to near eliminate the need to heat & cool.

These communities are far better to live in being highly appealing and vibrant.

[Alan Braggins]

's an inductive charging parking space though, not a road.)

[tony sayer]

Yes battery tech to some extent, but a lot of cleaver tech in how they use the battery nowadays to get long service times;!...

[<address_is]

I'm willing to bet that more progress was made in reducing power consumption hat increasing capacity.

Tim

[John Williamson]

My first cellphone had a lead acid battery that held 24 watt-hours, and needed charging every day, and would only talk for an hour or so. I had to carry a spare battery with me on a long day.

My current one has a battery about a fiftieth of the physical size, which holds 5 watt-hours, and will run the phone for three or four days on standby, or talk for a couple of hours.

The same physical size battery would now run the original phone for a week or the current phone for a month or more. Admittedly, the old phone could only be used to talk or as a very slow modem, and the new one is a PDA as well as a phone and a fast modem, so uses much more power on standby than a modern equivalent of the old one. I'd say the order of magnitude is about equal between power saving and battery improvements over the last fifteen years or so.

[Doctor Drivel]

That applies to all batteries.