Hum?

It is said that gays are creative in design and theater etc.

Maybe eunuchs and ballless wannabes are the thinkers who will come up with solutions to the world's greatest problems. Why might that be? Elimination of the distractions of sexual feelings and urges? Seems plausible. Pass it on: Become a eunuch and join a league of great thinkers and problem solvers.

All the talk of battery powered cars may be moot. General Motors is actually field testing hydrogen fuel cell powered prototypes. I know slightly a woman who got one in the lottery to be a field tester. So far, about a year out, it has worked better than GM expected.

Speed

nullorchis (imported) wrote: Thu Nov 12, 2009 6:19 am Or, a car that runs on hydrogen, which is extracted from desalinated ocean water, via a mechanism in the car which divides water into hydrogen and oxygen, which then results in more oxygen going into the atmosphere and less CO2 going into the atmosphere.

http://www.hydrogencarsnow.com/hydrogen ... d-cars.htm

This can be done with plan distilled water, I know my son and I have done it. We have finished the first two tests and are now getting ready for phase three. Our goal is to have a working model by the end of phase five. Phase three will be running a lawnmower.

River

Hum?

nullorchis (imported) wrote: Thu Nov 12, 2009 6:24 am It is said that gays are creative in design and theater etc.

Maybe eunuchs and ballless wannabes are the thinkers who will come up with solutions to the world's greatest problems. Why might that be? Elimination of the distractions of sexual feelings and urges? Seems plausible. Pass it on: Become a eunuch and join a league of great thinkers and problem solvers.

Still waiting for my Taco from Taco Bell!

"As your President and a Eunuch I promise to solve all your problems!"

The initial post made some sense. There are standard electrical plugs in all homes, as well as bulb sockets etc. There should be a standard created for plug ins, and chargers for electric cars. That way when visiting Aunt Tillie, you could plug your car in in her charger for the ride home.

Here's another point, what about providing an electrical charging device that is powered when the car is running ? If a friction powered generator were installed somewhere in the drive train, the car could be charging itself everytime you drive.

Certainly due to the drag this would create, it would not be the end all answer for charging, but would certainly help to increase range, and reduce the need for long term stops to re-charge.

As to the battery exchange idea, the flaw in that would be about quality. You turn in your brand new battery and the exchange is one that is two years old. Far better to come up with a fast charge method, so longer distance travel would be possible.

For now electric cars seem to be something for urban settings, where distances are short, and a daily or close to daily return to home would occur.Give the designers time, they'll come up with better alternatives, if we can keep the oil companies from buying up all the promising ideas.

Raymar

I posted this a few weeks ago when the discussion asked about natural gas powered vehicles:

Distribution of fuel is the problem.

The only reason there aren't more natural gas vehicles is that there aren't enough filling stations that sell compressed natural gas...

I worked out of two offices (for Department of Energy) about 60 miles apart. The agency kept a fleet of government vehicles and ran a passenger van between the cities. We had two of three natural gas filling stations in the entire of south western Pennsylvania. The cheap station cost $300,000 and the expensive one cost $500,000. The cost difference is a faster fill...

Plus because they had a big tank of compressed methane, they had to be located away from the buildings like those gas grill bottle stations at gas stations. On top of the installation expense, they required two or three shifts of operators trained on how to fill cars.

...

Now about electrical charging battery-powered cars --

How many cars will be charging at the same time?

How long will it take? One hour, two hours? Three hours? Six hours?

Where will the drivers wait for their cars? Surely not a sports bar serving alcohol...

This isn't impossible but it isn't like going to a gas station and pumping 15 gallons of gas in 3 minutes.

raymar2020 (imported) wrote: Thu Nov 12, 2009 10:37 am Here's another point, what about providing an electrical charging device that is powered when the car is running ? If a friction powered generator were installed somewhere in the drive train, the car could be charging itself everytime you drive.

Not exactly this way, but it is already done. It is called recuperative braking. Electric engine can work as generator and charge batteries.

raymar2020 (imported) wrote: Thu Nov 12, 2009 10:37 am As to the battery exchange idea, the flaw in that would be about quality. You turn in your brand new battery and the exchange is one that is two years old. Far better to come up with a fast charge method, so longer distance travel would be possible.

For now electric cars seem to be something for urban settings, where distances are short, and a daily or close to daily return to home would occur.Give the designers time, they'll come up with better alternatives, if we can keep the oil companies from buying up all the promising ideas.

Raymar

Should I say not only oil companies, but homeland security .

Just think - an electric car with range of about 1000km. Good?

Not so good - the battery will hold lot's of energy.

Lets calculate a first approximation:

Cruise speed = 80km/h

Time to go this 1000km 1000/80 = 12.5hours.

Approximate power to overcome wind drag at this speed is about 8kW.

Let count it 2 times - to approximate other things like rolling resistance, not 100% effective transmission etc.

Let it be 16kW - not so much. (But I probably miscalculated to the lower side).

So total energy needed is:

16kW*12.5h = 200kWh - it doesn't look much, but this energy is equivalent to that of 1.2 tons of dynamite.

And it needs to be stored. In the battery.

Now just think what will happen if the battery will be short circuited/damaged.

What happened when a Ford Pinto got rear-ended?

Go sell your f-n oil elsewhere. (I will stop short of telling you what I am really thinking about your family tree about now...)

I want my electric car.

Or, I would settle for a Functioning E-V1 from GM like they built in the early 90's.

Dave, you have an electric outlet in your garage. Do you have a GAS PUMP? Why would you not plug an electric car in over night to charge why you slept?

All of these are fair enough points, but I understand the original post to suggest something like the idea of the job of "gas" stations being to recharge batteries. You drive in, are given credit for the battery you are turning in, that battery is quickly disconnected, a fully charged one is connected, you are debited a value for that battery, you pay the difference between the credit and the debit and off you go.

The point was to "seed" some original thinking.

Hopefully some of these other comments might also spur thought.

Taking a slightly different tack...

What if computers had never standardized connections? or better yet what if every hard drive maker used a different connection to hook up to the motherboard?

There would be billions of connections and just as many different motherboards on the market.

I remember back when I went to Software Etc... store (way back in the stone age). Before you could buy a computer you had to pick out the software you wanted to run. The store had a section for each of the following... Windows, DOS, Apple 2e, Amiga, Commodore 64, OS and Macintosh! If you wanted to play games you bought an Apple 2e or Mac, and if you wanted it for business you bought a PC because that is what those platforms ran.

Computers never would have taken off in the public sector if we had not selected one standard platform as the default standard.

Eventually the world needs to pick one maybe two variations of something and run with it before the mass public will accept it and the retail stores will start to sell it.