Re: Energy shortage

From: Kevin Freels (megaquark@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue Aug 26 2003 - 18:12:53 MDT

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    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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