From: Kevin Freels (megaquark@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue Aug 26 2003 - 18:12:53 MDT
I read somewhere a few years ago about a guy that came up with an electric
vehicle design augmented by a flywheel engine. This design was supposed to
keep the same power available for quick, high-power takeoffs since the
flywheel was always running.
Does anyone remember reading baout this? I think it was Discover magazine.
What ever happened to that? It seemed at the time to be the solution to the
problem of electric cars ebeing under-powered.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Adrian Tymes" <wingcat@pacbell.net>
To: <extropians@extropy.org>
Sent: Tuesday, August 26, 2003 6:34 PM
Subject: Re: Energy shortage
> --- Mark Walker <mark@permanentend.org> wrote:
> > I'm no engineer (as I
> > am about to prove) but I'm not sure why you couldn't
> > make an electric
> > vehicle where at least some of the batteries pop out
> > and are replaced by
> > charged batteries. Suppose for example when you
> > bought your car you leased
> > your batteries from some company, say Exxon. (Gotta
> > have something for the
> > poor multinational to do). A decent electric vehicle
> > will get about 100
> > miles on a charge. Suppose on those occasions where
> > you need to travel more
> > than 100 miles you could pull into an Exxon station
> > and a little robot would
> > pull out your spent batteries and replace them with
> > charged ones.
>
> The standard keyphrase for this is "distribution
> system". Put simply: how do you get those stations
> set up in the first place? (Yes, there are gas
> stations now, but how do you pay for refitting those
> with the robots you mention prior to enough people
> having these cars to make it economically viable? A
> chicken-and-the-egg type problem.)
>
> Much the same problem faces hydrogen-powered fuel
> cells, which have much the same characteristics as
> batteries (at least as matters to cars: fuel cells
> breathe air, but this matters not in this
> application; they exhaust water vapor instead of
> nothing, but this also makes no diff to cars) except
> they have higher power storage densities (thus
> allowing longer trips between refuelling).
>
> > As it is now, I've got to make a weekly stop at the
> > gas station, so this
> > setup would definitely be more convenient. I'd love
> > to come home and simply
> > plug-in.
>
> Having operated an EV1 before they were scrapped, I
> can tell you that your dream - in this regard - is
> right-on. Granted, I had to plug in every few nights
> (battery range over 100 miles, daily round-trip
> commute under 50) or I'd be out of fuel, but it was
> an easy habit to get in to. (I still remember a
> friend's joke about the power meter: an 11-bar gauge
> showing how full the battery was. "Bars of power"
> sounded a little like I was powering it with cocaine
> or similar, but what else could one call it, simply
> enough for daily usage?)
>
> One of the problems was, most people apparently did
> (still do) much more than 100 miles of driving per
> day, and in many cases, the only practical place to
> plug in was at home. There were other chargers, but
> not even 10% - probably not even 1% - as many per
> unit area as gas stations, and charging was a slow
> enough process that it really had to be at some place
> you were going to be at for several hours - which
> usually meant work or home. Battery swapping robots
> would have solved the latter part of that, but then
> you get into liability issues if a broken battery
> gets swapped in which doesn't fail until you're 10
> miles from civilization and 40 miles from a charger.
>
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