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The reason diesel locomotives use electric motors is not because of a transmission load issue but instead because an electric motor makes maximum torque at 0 rpm. Having something that produces massive torque right from zero is exactly a match for the application.

I've been following the local power generation story for a number of years. There has been much progress made in that field for sure.

I agree...it would be great if we could finally get over the hurdle and accept more widespread nuclear power generation. Almost 30 years of constant attack has left us relying way way too much on coal and nat gas here in 2008. History will look back on this era with amazement about how we demonized nuclear energy while much more left-leaning countries adopted it almost completely.

Hey, with nuke power to charge them and regeneratively charged massive flywheels to create awesome acceleration, an electric car might not be so bad...might even be enough extra energy to power a soundtrack of a Ferrari 60 degree V12 to entertain the driver.

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Current stable:
2019 BMW M2 Competition slicktop 6MT
2011 BMW M3 sedan slicktop 6MT
2007 BMW 328i wagon (slushbox for now)
1975 CanAm 125MX2

Chuck, I have always had the same thoughts as you ... onboard ICE engines are much more efficient than electric in terms of % of stored energy converted to power. I believe that's a fact.

I was astounded when I read that the operating cost of a plug-in electric car is much lower than the cost per mile of a conventional car. This got me to think less in terms of efficiency and more in terms of the COST of the raw fuel -- cost per Joule or BTU or whatever for coal+nuclear must be so much cheaper than oil based sources to make electricity a win (at today's prices) compared with gasoline.

So it's a matter of global supply and demand (at today's demand) which prices electricity cheaper than gas. Note I say at today's demand. I shudder at the thought of what a nation full of plug-in electric cars would do to our nation's electricity prices.

We better start building a lot of new nuclear power stations. Fast. Or the technology for home-gen power better get mature and cheap very quickly, if millions of people start plugging their cars in at home.

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Mike Whitney
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V10, V8, V8t, I6, I6, V6, F4t, I4, I4, I4, I4, I2, 1, 1

Fortunately, people are greener in California and they generally already have an electric supply issue. Plus everyone will want to charge their car at pretty much exactly the same time (when they get to work and worse, as soon as they get home from work), so the load will be ji-freakin-normous. So they'll have to address the problem first and hopefully the rest of the country will be spared the blackouts learning from the problems there.

Electric car charging equipment can already utilize a full 30A 110V circuit for several hours. It won't be long before you'll be able to use a 50A 220V circuit. Ugh.


--Donnie

I've always thought it was insane when you see projections (always made by parties with a financial interest) of how a given energy technology will be "cheaper", etc. Take for example the guys pushing compressed natural gas, cng, for cars claiming "it's cheap, we've got plenty of it", etc.

Well, it's only been "cheap" exactly because the supply greatly exceeded the demand in the past. Heck, I've traded in the natural gas futures market since it started in the early 1990's. I can remember when any price over $3 was a rarity only briefly met in a few winters. Then in 2000 we had the whole Enron scandal, etc, and saw prices "everyone" thought were due to cornering the market, etc, when in fact it turned out to be a demand driven step-change, long term, in the NG market. Even after the NG market crashed by more than 50% in the past 3 months just now, it's still at $6 now.

Imagine what would happen to the natural gas market saddled by a massive increase in demand due to cng cars? All the reasons they are making the case for it will be long gone. All of us using NG to heat our homes and water will be left stranded with much higher prices that will never return to levels prior to the cng car introduction (we’ll probably be switching back to electricity, lol).

Hence we're already stressing the NG market due to the past two decades of all the advertising of "how cheap" NG is to use. That cheapness is already dramatically gone compared to "the old days." Now we have a ton of consumers hooked on NG. Nuke power was the devil according to the activists, so NG got the nod to build electric power plants powered off it...along with coal.

I can recall being in my undergrad energy conversion class in Broughton Hall at NC State back in the late 70's when the prof was teaching us about all the various types of coal and how we made power from it, etc. I remember thinking at the time how antiquated this dude was since surely coal was a thing of the past. Here we are 30 years later and our country gets just over 50% of our electric power from coal. Sigh...

Chuck

P.S. The new Camaro sure is interesting to talk about.

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Current stable:
2019 BMW M2 Competition slicktop 6MT
2011 BMW M3 sedan slicktop 6MT
2007 BMW 328i wagon (slushbox for now)
1975 CanAm 125MX2