Israel and the alternatives for oil

In the real world
Mikey
Fleet Admiral
Fleet Admiral
Posts: 35635
Joined: Fri Jul 27, 2007 3:04 am
Commendations: The Daystrom Award
Location: down the shore, New Jersey, USA
Contact:

Re: Israel and the alternatives for oil

Post by Mikey »

Tsukiyumi wrote:If you own a Tesla car, the charge is free, but for any other EV, there's a fee. You could still use these stations with a Chevy Volt, say.

Ian - It said half an hour for a 150 mile charge, but it is still a bit of a wait. It's substantially better than previous charge times, though.
I'm not talking about the cost of a charge... a Tesla Motors vehicle quite literally costs as much as the amount of my first mortgage.
I can't stand nothing dull
I got the high gloss luster
I'll massacre your ass as fast
as Bull offed Custer
Tsukiyumi
4 Star Admiral
4 Star Admiral
Posts: 21747
Joined: Fri Oct 12, 2007 2:38 pm
Location: Forward Torpedo Tube Twenty. Help!
Contact:

Re: Israel and the alternatives for oil

Post by Tsukiyumi »

I know. I was talking about Tesla's new supercharge stations, not the cars they sell.
There is only one way of avoiding the war – that is the overthrow of this society. However, as we are too weak for this task, the war is inevitable. -L. Trotsky, 1939
Mikey
Fleet Admiral
Fleet Admiral
Posts: 35635
Joined: Fri Jul 27, 2007 3:04 am
Commendations: The Daystrom Award
Location: down the shore, New Jersey, USA
Contact:

Re: Israel and the alternatives for oil

Post by Mikey »

Tsukiyumi wrote:I know. I was talking about Tesla's new supercharge stations, not the cars they sell.
Gotcha. Sorry, brain trauma and all that.*

* - I'm gonna ride that excuse as much as I can, BTW.
I can't stand nothing dull
I got the high gloss luster
I'll massacre your ass as fast
as Bull offed Custer
User avatar
Praeothmin
Lieutenant
Lieutenant
Posts: 634
Joined: Mon Jan 14, 2008 3:04 pm
Location: Quebec City

Re: Israel and the alternatives for oil

Post by Praeothmin »

IanKennedy wrote:
Tsukiyumi wrote:Tesla motors has recently at least partially solved the charging time issue.
That's a bit light on details. It takes an hour to charge enough for 150 miles. That would still be an issue for a trip that I used to do a lot. Oxford to Liverpool was 200 miles each way. I would get there in 2 to 4 hours, depending upon traffic. Having to stop for a hole hour in the middle is nasty. You've also got to wonder how may cars could be charged at one time. The M6 on a bank holiday weekend would have 10,000 cars on it. I can't see it being practical to keep every one queueing up for an hour. It was bad enough when it was 1 minute. Solar power in California may be practical but I can't see it working in the UK.
Well, you can buy a battery that allows a 300 miles range, so then you could do the 200 miles easily, then recharge while you're at your new location, and then go back in one trip after the charge is done...
And even with these inconveniences, this is a good step towards getting rid of petrol dependance...
The truth always depends on which side of the fence you're standing... ;)
Mikey
Fleet Admiral
Fleet Admiral
Posts: 35635
Joined: Fri Jul 27, 2007 3:04 am
Commendations: The Daystrom Award
Location: down the shore, New Jersey, USA
Contact:

Re: Israel and the alternatives for oil

Post by Mikey »

Except when you consider that fossil fuels are still the primary method of electrical generation.
I can't stand nothing dull
I got the high gloss luster
I'll massacre your ass as fast
as Bull offed Custer
User avatar
Graham Kennedy
Site Admin
Site Admin
Posts: 11561
Joined: Mon Jul 09, 2007 2:28 pm
Location: Banbury, UK
Contact:

Re: Israel and the alternatives for oil

Post by Graham Kennedy »

Yeah, any move to electric cars really only makes sense if it's done in step with massive investment in renewables or nuclear.
Give a man a fire, and you keep him warm for a day. SET a man on fire, and you will keep him warm for the rest of his life...
User avatar
IanKennedy
Site Admin
Site Admin
Posts: 6155
Joined: Mon Jul 09, 2007 2:28 pm
Location: Oxford, UK
Contact:

Re: Israel and the alternatives for oil

Post by IanKennedy »

Tsukiyumi wrote:If you own a Tesla car, the charge is free, but for any other EV, there's a fee. You could still use these stations with a Chevy Volt, say.

Ian - It said half an hour for a 150 mile charge, but it is still a bit of a wait. It's substantially better than previous charge times, though.
So it does, my mistake. Still going to need 1,000s of them at each site to be practical.
email, ergo spam
User avatar
IanKennedy
Site Admin
Site Admin
Posts: 6155
Joined: Mon Jul 09, 2007 2:28 pm
Location: Oxford, UK
Contact:

Re: Israel and the alternatives for oil

Post by IanKennedy »

Praeothmin wrote:
IanKennedy wrote:
Tsukiyumi wrote:Tesla motors has recently at least partially solved the charging time issue.
That's a bit light on details. It takes an hour to charge enough for 150 miles. That would still be an issue for a trip that I used to do a lot. Oxford to Liverpool was 200 miles each way. I would get there in 2 to 4 hours, depending upon traffic. Having to stop for a hole hour in the middle is nasty. You've also got to wonder how may cars could be charged at one time. The M6 on a bank holiday weekend would have 10,000 cars on it. I can't see it being practical to keep every one queueing up for an hour. It was bad enough when it was 1 minute. Solar power in California may be practical but I can't see it working in the UK.
Well, you can buy a battery that allows a 300 miles range, so then you could do the 200 miles easily, then recharge while you're at your new location, and then go back in one trip after the charge is done...
And even with these inconveniences, this is a good step towards getting rid of petrol dependance...
It's a start, but if I go to Scotland for the weekend I still have to stop at a "coaching inn" on the way there and back. You also need the hotel to have as many charging stations as they have rooms. You also need to cope with parking on the street if their car park is full. Basically, every place a car can park (or run out of power) would require a changing point.

I think we have a cultural issue here. In the UK there are more cars than places to put them, well that's a gross over exaggeration, but not as far from the truth than you would believe. It's pretty common for a hotel to only have about 1 parking space to every 10 rooms. Often a hotel will have zero car parking spaces. I'm not only talking about cheap hotels either. I've been to a Hilton with only 23 parking spaces and a huge number of rooms:

http://www3.hilton.com/en/hotels/united ... ?WT.srch=1

If you get there and the car park is full you have to park in the municipal car park. I can't see Brighton council providing power in it's multistory car parks any time soon. Even on a pay to use basis it would cost a lot of money to install. Equally, curbside parking is going to be interesting, even visiting a friend for a weekend I have to park on the opposite side of the road from his house. This is his house as you can see there is zero chance of parking near it and running a cable across a public road is not going to work.
email, ergo spam
Tyyr
3 Star Admiral
3 Star Admiral
Posts: 10654
Joined: Tue Mar 31, 2009 10:49 pm
Location: Jeri Ryan's Dressing Room, Shhhhh

Re: Israel and the alternatives for oil

Post by Tyyr »

I've always had a problem with the whole "no infrastructure" argument. It's a good thing that the original oil companies didn't fall down and whine that they "don't have the infrastructure". They acquired the money and went out and built the needed infrastructure, instead of playing "oh me helpless" game.
When the oil companies started off they didn't have 3 billion customers looking to consume 90 million barrels of oil per day. They had a few wierdos wanting to put gas in their new fangled cars. The infrastructure grew with the demand. Well with hydrogen you're starting all over again only with massive demand already in place.
The massive problem with electric cars is the range. The go a certain distance an then stop. Once stopped they then refuse go any further for a very long time. It kinda like going back to the days of horses, if you want to continue your journey you have to change horse, or let the horse rest.
Electric car range currently far exceeds average daily commute distances. 75% of the population drives 40 miles or less per day. Tesla's cars currently get from 160 to 200 miles on a charge. With nightly topping off of the car you'll be able to do most of your driving without ever using up more than 1/4 of the charge on your car. Now of course the downside is the road trip, when you plan on driving 160+ miles. Figure about three hours of straight driving more or less. How many 3 hour+ road trips do you regularly embark upon? Personally, I drive that far in a shot about once a year for vacation and even then according to Google I could still make it. Trips that exceed that distance are rare, once a year or less. Still, those trips occur so what's the solution?

Quick charging stations maybe. Even then those stops are going to be longer than a fill up but I'm not seeing one forced hour or two stop once a year as being a huge problem. For other people it might be if you regularly go on long trips.
At least with hydrogen you can simply fill up again and on you go. I can't see the infrastructure being a massive issue either. There are plenty of "gas" stations (we call them petrol stations here) that could easily be adapted to to support hydrogen as well as petrol. I've seen the working car and filling process demonstrated and it's not really any different from petrol.
Yeah, the gas stations aren't even a real consideration. Yes, you can change out the pumps for hydrogen and the average driver can handle it just fine. The problem is that the end user pumps are the least of your problems. First is production. Most global hydrogen production is a byproduct of the oil refining process. Well in a hydrogen economy that sort of goes away. That means to produce hydrogen you're going to have to build production facilities, most like sea water cracking plants. Of which there are none in any significant quantity or size. Next is distribution. You have to move the hydrogen from the production sites to the end user. Well you can't use existing trucks, they're thin skinned vehicles designed to move bulk atmospheric liquids. You need trucks designed to move bulk liquified hydrogen. Given the volumes of it necessary it's not likely that trucks would even be considered all that viable considering that each would be hauling around thousands of gallons of either super chilled or compressed hydrogen. Neither of which is something you want getting into a traffic accident. If you want to move it by pipeline then you're talking about laying tens of thousands of miles of high pressure pipe. The pumps at the station are a footnote in the infrasturcture problem.
Yeah, I think it's not so much the range as such as it is the recharge time. Electric car proponents like to point out that few journeys are more than 30 miles or so, so a car with a 50-100 mile range isn't that bad. But when I run out of diesel I can pull over and refuel within the space of a couple of minutes, whereas for an electric car I have to pull over and leave it on charge for most of a day. Even if they can increase the energy capacity of the current batteries, it won't help that much unless they can reduce the recharge time by tenfold or so.
LIke I said above, quick charge stations. They don't require any significant construction, just what amounts to a socket with a much larger amperage rating than you can have in a regular house. They have such stations in quite a few cities, the look like parking meters but they're actually recharge stations. Recharge times are still not comparable to oil but 30 minutes to an hour from dead to full isn't bad. Also, charging at home during the night and at work during the day will keep your car topped off most of the time.
I've wondered before if they couldn't have a standardised battery, and have a rack of them sitting on charge at each garage. You pull in and yank your battery out, stick it in the charging rack, then pull a charged one and stick it in your car. In theory it could work, so long as the garage has enough batteries in the stockpile. But then the batteries would have to be small and light enough to be lifted and carried, which at present they aren't.
Actually they are. There is that exact system in place in several locations already. Its also done with industrial forklifts in some warehouse settings. The problem is the word "standardised". You have to convince all the car makers to stop innovating with their batteries and accept a common standard one. Given that a big point of differentiation car makers will want will be their battery packs and their range as well as getting creative as to how they install them to maximize internal room, going to a single interchangable battery pack across all automakers would probably take an act of congress. Literally. Even then I'm not sure I'd want it. Like I said, car makers are getting creative with how they install the batteries in cars, moving away from the single large gas tank sized battery to smaller distributed systems like installing the batteries in the floor of the car and spreading them out. Quick change out systems exist but the problem is standardization.
They'd also have to make the replacement process close enough to idiot-proof that the average individual could a) perform the task and b) do so without risking killing or injuring themselves or someone else. Filling a car with liquid isn't exactly rocket science, and you still get plenty of people filling a diesel with petrol or vice-versa.
They have. You never even leave the car. Drive the car over a pit until your tires hit the stop. Lean out and pay for it at the kiosk, and below you a robot independantly handles the removal of the old battery and the installation of the new one. There is no driver input in the process at all. Hell, you can't even drive off and fuck things up because once the battery is removed the car's dead anyways.
A Tesla Motors car doesn't come with an auto loan, it comes with a mortgage.
Actually Tesla is moving away from the roadster's cost. They're producing a luxury sedan that's price comparable to current other ones on the market and their goal is to continue pushing the cost of the cars down. So far they're doing pretty well at it.
That's a bit light on details. It takes an hour to charge enough for 150 miles. That would still be an issue for a trip that I used to do a lot. Oxford to Liverpool was 200 miles each way. I would get there in 2 to 4 hours, depending upon traffic. Having to stop for a hole hour in the middle is nasty. You've also got to wonder how may cars could be charged at one time. The M6 on a bank holiday weekend would have 10,000 cars on it. I can't see it being practical to keep every one queueing up for an hour. It was bad enough when it was 1 minute. Solar power in California may be practical but I can't see it working in the UK.
That is a tough one, but there are EV's right now with 200 miles of range. Given that range is a major percieved issue with EV's I suspect that we'll shortly see EV's with ranges of 300 miles or so of range. There's always going to be trips that exceed EV range though which is why quick charge stations will be something that needs to become ubiquitous. Yes, having to stop for a 30 minutes charge instead of a 5 minute fill up sucks. But like I said, there's a reason we use oil, moving away from it is going to involve comprimises, big ones in some ways.
Yeah, any move to electric cars really only makes sense if it's done in step with massive investment in renewables or nuclear.
Well, nuclear at least. Harnessing EV's to renewables is kind of a hilarious proposition. Whether or not there's a quick charge station around becomes less of a concern than if it's going to be cloudy or still that day so there will even be electricity to use.
So it does, my mistake. Still going to need 1,000s of them at each site to be practical.
Actually all things considered you'd need about 6 times more charging points than gas pumps. Since you're looking about about 30 minutes to charge instead of 5 minutes to fill up. The nice thing about about a charging point is that it's more or less just an electrical outlet. An EV charging station would look less like a petrol station and more like a parking lot with lots of meters.
It's a start, but if I go to Scotland for the weekend I still have to stop at a "coaching inn" on the way there and back. You also need the hotel to have as many charging stations as they have rooms. You also need to cope with parking on the street if their car park is full. Basically, every place a car can park (or run out of power) would require a changing point.
I don't have a good answer for you Ian. I still think EV's are the way to go just based off simple efficency. Even the most efficent use of hydrogen, an onboard fuel cell, is only 25% efficent from a fuel standpoint. A straight up EV is 85% efficent. The long term cost of a hydrogen based vehicle is going to be three times that of an EV just from a fuel stand point. With that massive disparity in cost I think at some point you just have to figure out how to make the EV's work because hydrogen is a losing proposition from the start.
User avatar
IanKennedy
Site Admin
Site Admin
Posts: 6155
Joined: Mon Jul 09, 2007 2:28 pm
Location: Oxford, UK
Contact:

Re: Israel and the alternatives for oil

Post by IanKennedy »

Tyyr wrote:Actually all things considered you'd need about 6 times more charging points than gas pumps. Since you're looking about about 30 minutes to charge instead of 5 minutes to fill up. The nice thing about about a charging point is that it's more or less just an electrical outlet. An EV charging station would look less like a petrol station and more like a parking lot with lots of meters.
Actually that's not the case. If it takes 30 mins instead of 5 then you are correct you would think you need six times more stations, however, you have far less range on that 30 minute fill up so you need to stop far more often. An average "gas" car in the UK can get 350 miles between fill ups. The 30 minute fill up only gives you a range of 150 miles. Given that you are stopping 2 1/3 times as often. That means that your 6 x more becomes 14 times more because of the increased number of cars requiring charging.
Tyyr wrote:Electric car range currently far exceeds average daily commute distances. 75% of the population drives 40 miles or less per day. Tesla's cars currently get from 160 to 200 miles on a charge. With nightly topping off of the car you'll be able to do most of your driving without ever using up more than 1/4 of the charge on your car. Now of course the downside is the road trip, when you plan on driving 160+ miles. Figure about three hours of straight driving more or less. How many 3 hour+ road trips do you regularly embark upon? Personally, I drive that far in a shot about once a year for vacation and even then according to Google I could still make it. Trips that exceed that distance are rare, once a year or less. Still, those trips occur so what's the solution?

Quick charging stations maybe. Even then those stops are going to be longer than a fill up but I'm not seeing one forced hour or two stop once a year as being a huge problem. For other people it might be if you regularly go on long trips.
As I pointed out earlier for the average commute ranges may may be practical, however, we come to the problem of home charging. From what I've seen most of America has vast open spaces where every house has a car park large enough to put all their cars on. In the UK this is very far from the case. We have entire towns and cities where the only place to park your car is on the public road. I'm trying to think of somewhere in America I can compare it with. I suppose central New York is close. Think of the "brown stones" where the parking is on the pavement outside the house. Often you aren't able to park directly outside your own property, or even in your own road as there are more cars than spaces. The difference between here and New York, however, is that we don't have the 'Parking Garages' that you see there. Especially the stacking ones you see in "vacant lots". Here's a fairly typical area of Brighton for example. You can see the problems involved with trailing wires from your house to your car. The only "solution" then is to have charging points built into the street that you either subscribe to or pay on a per use basis. The issue with that, of cause, is the sheer number of points that would have to be available. Another issue would be that they would have to be tamper proof, as I can see teenagers thinking it was a great trick to unplug all the cars during the night, leaving you without power in the morning.
Tyyr wrote:Actually they are. There is that exact system in place in several locations already. Its also done with industrial forklifts in some warehouse settings. The problem is the word "standardised". You have to convince all the car makers to stop innovating with their batteries and accept a common standard one. Given that a big point of differentiation car makers will want will be their battery packs and their range as well as getting creative as to how they install them to maximize internal room, going to a single interchangable battery pack across all automakers would probably take an act of congress. Literally. Even then I'm not sure I'd want it. Like I said, car makers are getting creative with how they install the batteries in cars, moving away from the single large gas tank sized battery to smaller distributed systems like installing the batteries in the floor of the car and spreading them out. Quick change out systems exist but the problem is standardization.
The problem with a standard battery is that there is never any room for improvement. You can standardize the size, shape and connectors fairly easily but the charging method is a little more problematic. There is a reason most high capacity batteries come with their own charger. I'm talking about the likes of the batteries you get in cameras and camcorders, rather than the old AA cells. Each battery technology requires a different charging pattern for example, so long at a given voltage / current and then change to a higher (or lower) setting for the remaining charge. To standardize that you would have to "intelligent" batteries and chargers that can talk to each other and define the charging "rules". While in no way impossible, it will mean that things are going to have to be specified and agreed, which is going to take time.
email, ergo spam
User avatar
Praeothmin
Lieutenant
Lieutenant
Posts: 634
Joined: Mon Jan 14, 2008 3:04 pm
Location: Quebec City

Re: Israel and the alternatives for oil

Post by Praeothmin »

Mikey wrote:Except when you consider that fossil fuels are still the primary method of electrical generation.
Not where I live, it isn't...
The truth always depends on which side of the fence you're standing... ;)
Tyyr
3 Star Admiral
3 Star Admiral
Posts: 10654
Joined: Tue Mar 31, 2009 10:49 pm
Location: Jeri Ryan's Dressing Room, Shhhhh

Re: Israel and the alternatives for oil

Post by Tyyr »

Actually that's not the case. If it takes 30 mins instead of 5 then you are correct you would think you need six times more stations, however, you have far less range on that 30 minute fill up so you need to stop far more often. An average "gas" car in the UK can get 350 miles between fill ups. The 30 minute fill up only gives you a range of 150 miles. Given that you are stopping 2 1/3 times as often. That means that your 6 x more becomes 14 times more because of the increased number of cars requiring charging.
I'm going to disagree with you on that. Again, it's much easier to move electricity around than it is petrol. You can provide a charge to a car anywhere there's electricity so you can be more flexible about where you can charge cars at and when you can do it. You're not going to move all the charging load from gas stations to EV charging stations at a 1:1 ratio.
As I pointed out earlier for the average commute ranges may may be practical, however, we come to the problem of home charging. From what I've seen most of America has vast open spaces where every house has a car park large enough to put all their cars on.... Here's a fairly typical area of Brighton for example. You can see the problems involved with trailing wires from your house to your car. The only "solution" then is to have charging points built into the street that you either subscribe to or pay on a per use basis. The issue with that, of cause, is the sheer number of points that would have to be available. Another issue would be that they would have to be tamper proof, as I can see teenagers thinking it was a great trick to unplug all the cars during the night, leaving you without power in the morning.
I was going to argue "vast" but after seeing houses stacked up like that I think I won't. I will say this, putting a charge point in front of every house would likely be the solution. Again, I have to emphasize the simplicity of a such a device. It's an electrical outlet. Higher amperage rating is ideal but in the end it's an electrical socket. Either installed by the power company or done by home owners themselves. As someone who works for a power company I'd love to see us install them for free. Why? Because they put load on the grid when normally power demand would be in a slump. It'd be rather easy to secure them. We have methods for securing things like this in the industrial sector all the time to prevent people from unplugging things. All you'd need to do is put a little chrome on them, put a superfulous "i" in front of the name and there you go. All you'd need is a cover designed to encapsulate the charging plug and have an actual lock on it. Without a key you're not getting into the box to unplug the car. If you want to cut the cable... well have fun taking bolt cutters to a cable with 30 or so amps running through it. Another possibility if you're concerned about dickheaded teens fucking with the box is not have a box at all. It is possible to inductively charge a car, all the equipment could be buried in the road itself (yes I know that might cause all kinds of other problems but work with me on this) with the controls inside your house allowing you to control when the charger is turned on or not. Hell, you could set up a wireless transmitter so when an authorized car parks over your charger it automatically turns on.
The problem with a standard battery is that there is never any room for improvement. You can standardize the size, shape and connectors fairly easily but the charging method is a little more problematic. There is a reason most high capacity batteries come with their own charger. I'm talking about the likes of the batteries you get in cameras and camcorders, rather than the old AA cells. Each battery technology requires a different charging pattern for example, so long at a given voltage / current and then change to a higher (or lower) setting for the remaining charge. To standardize that you would have to "intelligent" batteries and chargers that can talk to each other and define the charging "rules". While in no way impossible, it will mean that things are going to have to be specified and agreed, which is going to take time.
Here's the problem though, you buy a... Peugeot... those are a thing right? Anyways, you buy your French car with it's standardized envelope battery and it gets 150 miles. Well what if the same envelope battery on a BMW can get 240 miles. Now when you pull into the battery swap station how do you handle that? I bought the BMW because I wanted the range. I'm not taking some POS Peugeot battery with 60% of the range. Or some battery with half it's cells shorted out. What if I decide to buy a cheap car with a small battery pack knowing I can go use a BMW one and get BMW range on Renaut money?

I'm honestly making more of a thing of this than it probably would be. You could likely make this work on some kind of swap basis or a per kilowatt hour charge so you could get a bigger battery for longer distances. It's just a hell of a lot more complicated than filling up your tank with a commodity like petrol. You're now managing an inventory of physical objects with differing specs and trying to meet demand for them. It's an odd system to try to wrap your head around without a completely standardized battery and not just its interface.

As an engineer the swap thing just makes me nervous as I see lots of moving parts, connectors, and contacts that have to be cycled on a regular basis vs. something I can just build rigid at the factory.
User avatar
IanKennedy
Site Admin
Site Admin
Posts: 6155
Joined: Mon Jul 09, 2007 2:28 pm
Location: Oxford, UK
Contact:

Re: Israel and the alternatives for oil

Post by IanKennedy »

Tyyr wrote:
Actually that's not the case. If it takes 30 mins instead of 5 then you are correct you would think you need six times more stations, however, you have far less range on that 30 minute fill up so you need to stop far more often. An average "gas" car in the UK can get 350 miles between fill ups. The 30 minute fill up only gives you a range of 150 miles. Given that you are stopping 2 1/3 times as often. That means that your 6 x more becomes 14 times more because of the increased number of cars requiring charging.
I'm going to disagree with you on that. Again, it's much easier to move electricity around than it is petrol. You can provide a charge to a car anywhere there's electricity so you can be more flexible about where you can charge cars at and when you can do it. You're not going to move all the charging load from gas stations to EV charging stations at a 1:1 ratio.
We're talking about the practicality of using EV vs Petrol, the ratio of replacement doesn't come into it. If it's to work it's got to work when everyone has one and not when it's a luxury own by a few. If you have a given number of cars on the road and you have to stop more often then with one tech then you will need a lot more charging points because of those extra stops. That could be an issue in a country where space is at a premium. Not everywhere is as spaced out as the USA. Our motorway service stations can get full during busy periods, public holidays and the like. Stopping twice as often for six times as long is going to be a major issue. The other issue is that charging is taking place at more peak times, rather than the middle of the night as you have assumed elsewhere.
Tyyr wrote:I was going to argue "vast" but after seeing houses stacked up like that I think I won't. I will say this, putting a charge point in front of every house would likely be the solution. Again, I have to emphasize the simplicity of a such a device. It's an electrical outlet. Higher amperage rating is ideal but in the end it's an electrical socket. Either installed by the power company or done by home owners themselves. As someone who works for a power company I'd love to see us install them for free. Why? Because they put load on the grid when normally power demand would be in a slump. It'd be rather easy to secure them. We have methods for securing things like this in the industrial sector all the time to prevent people from unplugging things. All you'd need to do is put a little chrome on them, put a superfulous "i" in front of the name and there you go. All you'd need is a cover designed to encapsulate the charging plug and have an actual lock on it. Without a key you're not getting into the box to unplug the car. If you want to cut the cable... well have fun taking bolt cutters to a cable with 30 or so amps running through it. Another possibility if you're concerned about dickheaded teens fucking with the box is not have a box at all. It is possible to inductively charge a car, all the equipment could be buried in the road itself (yes I know that might cause all kinds of other problems but work with me on this) with the controls inside your house allowing you to control when the charger is turned on or not. Hell, you could set up a wireless transmitter so when an authorized car parks over your charger it automatically turns on.
Yes, scary isn't it. There are 25 million homes in the UK. That's going to cost a pretty penny. Wow, induction charging, that will be fun for the teens to kill people with pacemakers (joke). Seriously, you are not going to get induction charging and quick at the same time. They would have to be unconnected to houses in any way. People cannot always park in their own street, let alone in the same space within their street. If you look closer at the picture you will see that some of those roads are only wide enough to park on one side of the road (otherwise there's no way for cars to actually move up and down the street). Any hope of the sockets relating to houses is out of the window. It has to be a self contained unit in the road surface or kerb, lockable into the car and have auto power cut off when complete. People will not be arsed to go out and disconnect, nor will they move the car afterwards out of fear of not finding anywhere else to park.
Tyyr wrote:Here's the problem though, you buy a... Peugeot... those are a thing right? Anyways, you buy your French car with it's standardized envelope battery and it gets 150 miles. Well what if the same envelope battery on a BMW can get 240 miles. Now when you pull into the battery swap station how do you handle that? I bought the BMW because I wanted the range. I'm not taking some POS Peugeot battery with 60% of the range. Or some battery with half it's cells shorted out. What if I decide to buy a cheap car with a small battery pack knowing I can go use a BMW one and get BMW range on Renaut money?

I'm honestly making more of a thing of this than it probably would be. You could likely make this work on some kind of swap basis or a per kilowatt hour charge so you could get a bigger battery for longer distances. It's just a hell of a lot more complicated than filling up your tank with a commodity like petrol. You're now managing an inventory of physical objects with differing specs and trying to meet demand for them. It's an odd system to try to wrap your head around without a completely standardized battery and not just its interface.

As an engineer the swap thing just makes me nervous as I see lots of moving parts, connectors, and contacts that have to be cycled on a regular basis vs. something I can just build rigid at the factory.
I was more talking about stifling the innovation in the battery and not the efficiency of the car. As newer and presumably better batteries are invented they need different regimens to charge them. Even now, with LiPo batteries there are many different types, each requires it's own charger. You are either going to have to make these chargers 'intelligent' or replace them all the time. As I said all that is quite possible, however, imagine the time to get all that agreed on a planet wide basis.
email, ergo spam
Mikey
Fleet Admiral
Fleet Admiral
Posts: 35635
Joined: Fri Jul 27, 2007 3:04 am
Commendations: The Daystrom Award
Location: down the shore, New Jersey, USA
Contact:

Re: Israel and the alternatives for oil

Post by Mikey »

Praeothmin wrote:
Mikey wrote:Except when you consider that fossil fuels are still the primary method of electrical generation.
Not where I live, it isn't...
I don't know where you live, but here on Earth it is...
I can't stand nothing dull
I got the high gloss luster
I'll massacre your ass as fast
as Bull offed Custer
User avatar
Deepcrush
4 Star Admiral
4 Star Admiral
Posts: 18917
Joined: Thu Sep 06, 2007 8:15 pm
Location: Arnold, Maryland, USA

Re: Israel and the alternatives for oil

Post by Deepcrush »

Praeothmin, 16 percent of global production doesn't equal "primary".
Jinsei wa cho no yume, shi no tsubasa no bitodesu
Post Reply