[V8] watts and amps: how revolting

[Roger Woodbury]

Mike Arman's analysis of the future of the electric car is very interesting.
Not far from where I live is a very nice looking 911 Targa that has no
engine.  Instead in the rear is a big electric motors with a bunch of deep
cycle batteries carefully arranged artfully on either side where normally
would be exhaust headers and cylinder heads.  I have NO idea how it runs,
but my wrench services it yearly..WHAT he services, I'm not sure. I'll have
to ask the next time.

 

I have pondered the issue of electric cars for YEARS.  And yes, I agree with
Mike that in fairly short order the mileage issue will be resolved, with
newer and better batteries.  But I think that replacing the gasoline (or
diesel) engine is more than five or ten years off.  I believe that electric
cars will be mandatory in city, urban and suburban areas within that time,
but considerably further out for rural areas.  There are several reasons for
this, I think.

 

First of all, is the issue of range.  An electric car without a hybrid
capability is useless in rural Maine.  Sure, for a lot of the driving that I
do on a daily basis, it might work pretty well, but if I go to Portland
(which I do about once a month now, much more in years past), that round
trip is 300 miles and sometimes it is considerably more.  Heck, I can do 150
miles leaving home, driving the 18 miles to Acadia National Park's entrance,
and then driving around on Mt Desert Island for the day!  So an electric car
will need to have more than a paltry three or four hundred miles' range.  

 

Now we are not talking about a long trip in THIS state yet.  A  trip to Ft
Fairfield is easily 600 miles round trip, if more than just going and coming
is counted.  That's a long way, so until there are service stations that
will enable charging the vehicle, long distances in a ways away by watts I
think.

 

And while we speak of charging, it might be useful to think about the
infrastructure that will be needed to recharge vehicles.  I know enough
about electricity to know that if I touch the wrong two wires, I get bit.
But let's consider driving the new electric Audi E6S Avant 300 miles, and
all of a sudden the buzzer goes off stating that you better plug me in real
quick, or you will be pushing me.  How long is it going to take to charge
the batteries?  Over night is not a good answer, so some really neat rapid
charge system will be mandatory for wide spread use of electric cars.

 

And then there is the issue of cost, and I wonder what REAL numbers really
mean.  Just as I wonder what the real cost of a Pious is, I wonder how much
the real cost of an electric car is, say considering that I plug my electric
E6S Avant in at five in the evening, and charge it for 12 hours..at fifteen
cents per kilowatt hour.  Consider that that fifteen cents per kilowatt hour
is without the motor travel tax that the state and Feds will smack onto the
cost of electricity used in automobiles.  I expect that we will be lucky if
that kwh charge is less than tripled by taxes.

 

I completely disagree with one thing that Mike said though, and that was his
reference to insulation in homes.  The insulation levels of the vast
majority are palty and unacceptably insufficient.  The major reason for this
is that the US has not signed the Kyoto Accords as have most of the northern
European countries.  In those countries Passive House is becoming the
building code of  all new construction and for all retrofit as well.
Passive House is a system of energy management and reduction (to use a
simplified term that I invented), where a dwelling uses not more than 15 kwh
per square meter  annually, and the total electric load is not more than 120
kwh per square meter annually.  In dwellings only the elimination of thermal
bridging and extremely high levels of insulation make this possible.  Houses
are virtually air tight and air is introduced to the house through a heat
recovery ventilation system that captures as much as 90 per cent of the heat
in the house and recycles it bringing fresh, warm air to be circulated
through the dwelling.

 

I think that electric cars will be much the same.  Certainly a great deal of
attention will have to be paid to window and door sealing, and I expect that
part of the energizing process at start up will be the establishment of a
slight vacuum inside the car.  Once that is done, the heat recovery
ventilation system will begin to bring air into the car, and in depths of
cold weather a small amount of electric resistance in the intake line will
bring the air up to desired cabin temperature.  Heat generated by the
electric motor will be captured and ambient heat from the occupants will be
recaptured and recirculated.  Modern heat recovery ventilation systems take
very little energy now, so eventually, only a few watts will be necessary.

 

Insulation could well be a form of vacuum insulated panel such as is used in
seaborne freezers and more and more in refrigerated trailers.  The R value
of VIPs is not R30 per inch, so a highly controlled interior environment is
pretty much within reach of a modern automobile now.

 

Roger