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By Ted Mitchell (registered) | Posted April 11, 2007 at 12:06:06
Honestly, I don't write articles for the purpose of baiting people with agendas to defend into adhominem attacks, but it is fun!
Maybe comments would be more reliable if declarations of competing interests were made (like who employs you). But then ideological bias is more intense than financial bias.
theBike makes only one good point: batteries are expensive and replacement is an issue. Since there has been no mass-market efficiency applied to electric cars, think of their present development like where the personal computer was in 1980: Remember the VIC20?
theBike's comments about battery weight are ridiculous, since electric cars can be smaller, lighter, simpler and are essentially "leapfrog" technology since it does not and should not mimic the typical ICE car.
Here's an example so you can check the math. I have a Lithium polymer battery for an electric r/c plane: 11.1V 1500mAh 130g $50. That's 16.7 Wh.
My second car requirement involves city driving, 15 km range per day, peak speed 60 km/h, av speed 30 km/h. Something the size of a Smart car would do, let's say it requires 3kW average power (conservative overestimate). Energy required for this: 1.5 kWh.
model airplane batteries needed: 90 battery cost: $4500 (realistically about half this cost if you were to use purpose-sized larger cells) battery weight: 11.7 kg (26 lbs) peak battery power at 20C: 30kW = 40 HP, i.e. same as a diesel smart but lighter, torquier, would easily be able to squeal tires tailpipe pollution: 0 (handy in the city, no?) recharge cost: $0.20 at $0.13/kWh, the same as leaving 2 60W bulbs on overnight.
Incidentally, NiMH is roughly half the cost and twice the weight of Li.
Expensive? Slightly. Heavy? No. Practical range? It's a second city car, not the Dakkar rally. I have another car for road trips.
For comparison, so you can confirm my example is in the ballpark, here's the specs on the $9500 Hymotion 5 kW lithium pack for the Prius:
http://www.hymotion.com/pdf/Specs_PHEV_L...
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