Converting Your Car To An Electric Vehicle

I read about electric cars being pollution free, but if you plug them in to recharge them, aren't you using electricity created by coal-fired generators? Coal-fired generation of electricity seems to be the most efficient energy source in America, so maybe that's better than burning gasoline. But I'd think people should realize that if they recharge their 'pollutionless' electric car at home, they're creating more demand for more electricity, more power lines in their backyards, and more coal-burning generation.

Phil,

Check out this page, I think it answers your questions:

http://eaaev.org/Flyers/index.html#Emissions

Justin

Following that link I see "The energy equivalent of one gallon of gasoline is 33.53 kWh of electricity (GGE). However, 1 GGE of electricity in an EV takes you 110 miles. Over 2 times farther than an HEV . . ."

Burning one gallon of gasoline makes about 20 lb CO2. So if we go 110 miles in an HEV we'll burn 2 gallons and make 40 lb CO2. Using the US national average electric grid, which is about 50% coal-fired generation, the emissions are 1.43 lb carbon per kWh. So 110 miles in an EV will make 33.53 * 1.43 = 48 lb carbon. That's the equivalent of 46 mpg, a far cry from zero emissions!

So the advantage of present-day EVs is they're small and efficient, not because they're powered electrically. And if they keep souping up the components to make EVs (a la Teslas and dragsters) bigger and more powerful, they'll lose that advantage. What we need are lightweight, efficient, aerodynamic vehicles.

Hybrids are a great idea because every kWh that goes into the battery was recovered from braking (normally wasted). Plug-in hybrids might make sense from a grid management perspective, by using cheap off-peak power, but let's not sell them as zero emissions. That energy has to come from somewhere, and if it's from a plug then there's coal smoke behind it.

To Toad the 12 sprocket.

They are zero-emission vehicles if they are powered by renewable energy. The problem lies not in the vehicles themselves but the source of the electricity. Ultimately, in the long term, electric vehicles are more compelling than hybrids or biofuel vehicles, because of their higher efficiency. They are the only vehicles where the
"fuel" can be generated by the owners themselves.

Right now, owners of electric cars can buy renewable power from some utility companies, or they can install solar or wind power generators in their home.

Justin

To Toad the 12 sprocket.

I agree that coal fired is pumping CO2, but it's not just CO2 that's the problem! When you look at smog, it's not the CO2 that's causing all the health problems, but CO & NOX, VOC's.

So if you want to compare Apples to Apples, you have to look PAST just CO2. Coal fired plants don't just pollute CO2, plenty of mercury & other toxics, just mining the coal is bad.

However, where is it easiest to control pollution?

Among millions upon millions of cars & trucks, or, just a few thousand power plants? At source of course.

I plan on converting my Prius to an EV-10 in three years, because I wanted a car today that sits two adults, two teens, one dog, plenty of packing room, and pollutes way way less than a mini-van or a God-forbid SUV.

Bonus, my Prius cost less than most mini-vans or SUV's. I invested in a roof-rack for the camping trips.

In so far as the "pollution" caused by the NIMH battery, that's a load of baloney. The battery will last me 10 yrs 100,000 miles easy, and extremely easy to recycle.
Why, I even get PAID to return that battery.

Regular disposable batteries produced & sold by the millions are much more of a problem than every single Prius already sold PLUS the next million sold.

FWIW, the US has "dirty" electricity, but that's not the case everywhere. 100% of my electricity is Hydro, and my rate is 0.06 (rounded up) per KWH. Can $.

So in my case going to Plug-in Hybrid will produce zero NEW Co2 (Quebec does not create new dams, but windmills only).
My cost for driving 100 miles w/o the ICE, at 50Mph & less, will be at around a dollar. Or two.

If I lived in San Diego, then I'd invest in a cool wind mill. Check out this baby :
http://mariahpower.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13&Itemid=35

There are a lot of good resources listed in this article. I just wanted to vouch for the DIY Electric Car Forums listed in the entry. I'm part of the community and believe it is an excellent place to inquire about EV conversion info.

Looking past the crazy dedication it would take to make this kind of conversion, and the "sweep it under the rug" manner in which EV proponents try to ignore offsite pollution (particularly NOx), the obsession with the ancient technology of a human-driven vehicle on a paved surface at high speeds is very short-sighted.

No matter how efficient the engine, you've still got weight, wind resistance, and congestion to deal with. It is simply inherently inefficient to move a ton or two of mass to transport a couple hundred pounds of mass at average velocities not much greater than a non-drafting bicycle at sprint speeds, and to have a couple hundred million of these large vehicles sharing limited space and access points with large variations in demand for that space.

To (person who posted the last comment):

True, the infrastructure need to support cars is very inefficient, and should be eliminated, as I note in this previous post:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/08/optimal_green_a.php

Quoted for convenience:

Actually, the ultimate green car would be no car at all. Even if we all drove zero-emission cars, it would still require expanding our vast and inefficient roadway infrastructure. In cities, the use of cars inevitably leads to congestion and polluted air. An optimal transportation system is a car-free public system of metros and high-speed intercity trains. Does this sound idealistic? Most New Yorkers are already car-free, but unfortunately, not all of them, hence they are subjected to noise and pollution. In Italy, Venice is an example of a modern city that is virtually car-free today. Central to a care-free city is a metro system that is cheap, clean, comfortable and runs 24 hours-a-day on a regular schedule (4-8 minutes intervals). If planned and funded correctly, metro stations are within walking or biking distance of all areas of the city. This enables reliable door-to-door transportation for everyone. Intracity transportation could be served by high-speed rail (see Japan or Italy). For more details see Carfree Cities.

Until we have a car-free infrastructure built into our cities and towns, an interim goal would be to design a efficient car that would replace the highly ineffective ones we have today.

Dead link in article @ "Convert It" citation.

Thanks for article. Very helpful.

> Check out this page, I think it answers your questions:

I'm sorry to say it doesn't answer all my questions and raises more.

The page comments in passing that gasoline pollutes from the ground through all it's refinery stages to burning in the car, but it says coal-fired plants are getting cleaner. I'd like to hear about the pollution from coal from the ground through burning in the plant. Are they finding that there's no pollution in coal mines? That the health risks to miners are comparable to oilworkers? And the death rates? That getting the coal processed from the mine and delivered to the plant doesn't pollute?

If electric cars are plugged in at night when rates are down, are they saying this won't increase demand? That night rates won't increase to meet this new demand? We had rolling blackouts in California a few years back, and they threaten with every hot summer. Will having electric cars not make it worse by creating a situation where there's 24-hour demand? (Assuming we all plug our cars in at night.) Will we not need new generating capacity? Won't we need new or updated power grids to meet increased use from electric cars?

As I said, I think coal-fired generators are most efficient fuel source in America, but I'd like to see more information on what the results of increased demand from plug-in electric cars does regarding the need to mine more coal, build more plants, and increase the number of transmission lines to get the electricity to my house.

I think the Electric Auto Association (the source of that Web page) has an agenda just like everyone else. I don't think I'm getting the whole story from that page.

....Will we not need new generating capacity...

No we won't. Not even if all cars currently operating in the U.S. would be electric, the national grid would not need to be expanded.

BTW:

I live in Pasadena, CA and the PWP offers the Green Energy Program to which I subscribe. It's only about 30 $ more a month (which I can charge back to my clients- I run a production business which demands a good amount of electricity...) and makes me feel that I am making a difference from buying back the same power I use from the clean grid, thereby encouraging that industry and enterprise with my individual contribution.

That's "voting with my wallet" - at least the way I see it...!

Phil, here's a piece from Tesla Motors that might be helpful:

http://www.teslamotors.com/efficiency/environmental_benefits.php

Note, in the very first paragraph, that Tesla Motors is partnering with a company to provide home solar panels specifically for charging the car. No coal, no grid load, just clean power from the sun. Justin mentioned this also in an earlier comment.

If you hook the panels to your in-home wiring in the right way, you can put excess electricity you generate back into the grid, offsetting a little bit of someone else's carbon.

Also, Toad the 12 Sprocket's statement, "Hybrids are a great idea because every kWh that goes into the battery was recovered from braking (normally wasted)" is not entirely correct. Not every kW is recovered by regenerative breaking: There are lots of losses along the way: heat, friction, and so on that make the recovered energy less than 100%, though a good amount can be recovered. It's important to remember that EVs also can use regenerative breaking to recover some energy, as does Tesla's Roadster. Regenerative breaking is not exclusive to hybrids.

A couple of things people need to understand about electric vehicles:

1. As woode points out, regenerative braking is typical in electric vehicles and has been for decades, in electric trains, subways, and so forth. This is not a special feature of hybrids at all.

2. Electric motors are inherently far more efficient than internal combustion reciprocating engines. So comparisons of the BTU content of gasoline vs. coal or whatever kind of miss the point. Electric motors are about 80% efficient, give or take, while reciprocating engines are about 25% efficient at best. They create a lot more heat, which you lose through the tail pipe (in fact it's so much heat it could warm a home in winter), and they constantly accelerate and decelerate pistons and valves, thousands of times a second.

Nice article, very interesting. As a car-lover, and a car-customizer (built, not bought) I love the idea of making my car into an electric car.

A lot of the comments have very good points regarding where the electricity comes from, and other issues outside the cars themselves that affect us and our environment. Many of the questions/comments that came to me as I read were covered by other people...

My question is this... Why can't we have it all? I don't believe for a second that there is such a thing as free energy, however, it bothers me that there are only 2 options available to us: electric (short range - low power), and combustion (inefficient and dirty). It seems to me that with a little human ingenuity, we can overcome these issues relatively easily. I question whether the issue is really one of ability...or just desire. It seems completely possible to me that we can have fun, powerful, economic and clean vehicles, without selling our souls or our planet.

Is it impossible to create a clean engine, or just not profitable?

Those of you who complain about the pollution from coal to charge an EV are looking at the problem from the wrong angle. First of all, every study that has compared "well to wheels" pollution from an EV vs. an internal combustion engine (ICE) concluded that the EV wins by a large margin. Please see:
http://www.sherryboschert.com/FAQ.html

The comment that burning a gallon of gas releases approx. 20 lbs oc CO2 into the atmosphere doesn't take into account the large amount of electricity and natural gas used to refine the oil into gas in the first place. Studies show that the kWh and NG used to pump, refine and transport that gallon of gas to the filling station is enough energy to run my EV for about 40 miles. I can then run my EV about 120 more miles on the energy contained in that gallon of gas.

But to the point of pollution from dirty electricity, if you are against using dirty electricity to run cars, why on Earth are you using that same dirty electricity to run your house? You use way more electricity in your house than you would ever use in a car.

I've found that most people waste more power in their house than they would use in an EV. My RAV EV from Toyota travels about 3-4 miles on a kWh. The Tesla Roadster will go about 6 miles on a kWh. Look at your electricity bill and see how many kWh you use in a month. Then take your average monthly driving distance and run the numbers.

I'll be willing to bet you'll see a way to cut down on your home's power use so you can use those wasted kWh in your car. Most of you could easily eliminate all of your gas use and keep your household electricity use the same by using the wasted kWh to replace the gas you used to use.

You won't be using oil that you have to buy from the likes of Exxon or the Saudis, you won't be polluting the air in the community where you live, and if you really cared about the pollution from the coal plant, you would buy your electricity from a renewable source.

We took a survey of EV owners in California last year and found that 48% of them were already getting their power from solar to run their houses and cars. This compares with less than 1% of the total population who use solar.

EV owners know that offsetting the high gas prices with a PV system means the system will pay off very quickly.

Go solar PV and EV as soon as you can and clean up your personal mess.

Please.

There's a couple of good videos on youtube about converting cars to electric:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2ijdVC_AAQ

It's a retired auto-body worker that converts them for customers (typically older people that just drive around town). He seems to like the 94 camry the best for it's quietness, but he also likes the bmw because of it's incredible frame strength.

One of the best cars to convert is actually the geo metro because of it's low weight (1,600lbs), although it can't hold as many batteries, it has a great power/weight ratio.

Talking from memory here, so I may not have the facts exactly right... there was an article here within the last week which talked about an EPA study on night-time charging of electric vehicles. Something like 77% of our cars (if they were all electric) could be recharged using the existing overnight surpluss.

In other words even if 3/4 of the nation converted their car there would be no net gain in coal useage, pollutants, etc. We are already burning the coal since the plants can't be shut down overnight. We might as well use it.

The date on this post is over a month in the future, which means it it will be at the top of my RSS feed for weeks still to come. Please re-date.

Thanks.

"Gasoline-powered cars. They are perhaps the most inefficient device that many of us use daily."

Electric-powered cars. Perhaps even more inefficient than gasoline as electricity has to be generated at an electricity station for them to charge.

We are beginning construction on a "green" house with solar power in the Spring. Hopefully we can go completely off the grid, or as close as possible. We are planning on converting at least one car to elecric. We probably need to allow for some winter heating in the garage for the batteries. How much elec. will they require to recharge? Is it possible to recharge a vehicle (or 3) from a solar elec. home? I'm wondering if we can go completely off the grid and reasonably expect to acquire enough daily solar energy to operate our home and recharge the cars.

Here is the truth about hydrogen energy.

A. Hydrogen can be made at home and requires NO NEW INFRASTRUCTURE. Anybody who says it can’t be made at home or work is either a shill or completely out of touch with reality and technology. You can make it for free, at home, all day long and all night long. The production can be powered by solar, wind, microbes and other free sources. The metrics quoted by the anti-hydrogen crowd are just lies to protect their competing business interests.

B. It now costs less to make hydrogen from water than any known way to make gasoline and it continues to get cheaper every month: The GE Noryl system, The R4 processor and over a hundred different systems can do this NOW; with many more expected next year. The “battery shill” spin has worn thin and has been supplanted by facts. Hydrogen is made from WATER via solar energy, wind energy, microbes, radio waves, sunlight and salt, and other FREE sources of energy. Hydrogen can also be made from any organic garbage, waste, plants or ANYTHING organic via lasers, plasma beams or dozens of other powered exotics which can be run off of EITHER the grid or the free hydrogen made from solar energy, wind energy, microbes, radio waves, sunlight and salt, and other FREE sources of energy OR the grid. There is no oil that needs to be involved anywhere in the production of hydrogen. These systems trickle charge hydrogen into storage containers, either tanks or solid state cassettes, 24/7.

C. Tens of millions of dollars are being spent by battery companies like A123, Cobasys, AltairNano, etc. in order to discredit hydrogen because hydrogen works better than batteries. A large number of “pundits” who act as “writers”, “bloggers”, “authors” and “non-profit evangelist group founders” are actually supported by financial gain from battery companies who are terrified of hydrogen displacing their revenue streams. They include:

Ulf Bossel of the European Fuel Cell Forum,

Alec Brooks

James Woolsey

EV World

Sam Thurber

Cal Cars

Felix Kramer

Here are the hard facts. I bet $50,000.00 cash that all of the facts in these RESPONSES are true. If you can prove that your batteries beat these FACTS then you get my 50K if not then I get yours.

Lets go over the battery and bio-fuel shills lies:

Lie # 1:
“But critics say the process of producing hydrogen requires three to four times more energy than the hydrogen later generates in the fuel cell.”
RESPONSE: This is data from the 60’s. It is now more efficient to make hydrogen than it is to make gasoline, build or use batteries or process bio-fuel. The technology has beat everything else.

Lie # 2:
“the cars are too expensive.”
RESPONSE: The production of hydrogen cars is at an early stage while battery cars have been around for almost a hundred years and the battery cars are still expensive for what you get. The Moore’s law on hydrogen cars shows a clear price decline to low cost in market volume.

Lie #3:
“ hydrogen molecules can't be contained easily without energy-consuming compressors or maintaining them in liquid form at extremely low temperatures , and it's extremely difficult to store,"
RESPONSE: This data is also from the 60’s. Hydrogen is stored in chemical powders and muds that easily contain vast amounts of hydrogen. Pressure and liquid tanks to store hydrogen are old school archaic technologies. Hydrogen can be easily stored in over 2800 different solid state compounds.

Lie #4:
"The infrastructure isn't there”
RESPONSE: Solid state hydrogen can be shipped by UPS, Common Carrier and uses all existing infrastructure. DOPT has already licensed and approved such solid state delivery via common EXISTING INFRASTRUCTURE. This method can reavch every person on earth TODAY! This requires almost NO NEW INFRASTRUCTURE. NO INFRASTRUCTURE IS NEEDED!!! This is the biggest lie of all. A large number of start-ups have solid state hydrogen solutions that entirely use existing infrastructure.

Lie #5:
“the hydrogen is too expensive”
RESPONSE: Hydrogen can be made at home or office in numerous ways powered by solar or wind or microbes or any number of free power sources. It is always being made by such devices and constantly trickle charged into solid state storage systems all day and night FOR FREE without grid power. Hydrogen processors now make hydrogen with 91% efficiency.

A “fuel cell car” and an “electric car” ARE THE SAME THING. The shills want you to think otherwise. The only difference is where the electricity is stored. You can pull the batteries out of every Zenn, Tesla, Zap, EV1, Venture Vehicle, etc. and pop a fuel cell/hydrogen pack in the same hole and go further, more efficiently in EVERY SINGLE CASE.

A modern fuel cell and hydrogen system beats batteries on every front including

FIRE- Batteries catch on fire constantly and have been the result of massively more fires and explosions than hydrogen.

Life Span- Hydrogen power systems run massively longer and provide massively greater range per charge than batteries.

Run Time – The run time of batteries constantly shortens while hydrogen does not.

Memory Effect- This effect is not present in hydrogen systems

Recharge Time- modern hydrogen systems are instant recharge.

Charge life- Modern hydrogen systems can recharge massively longer than batteries before end of life.

Nano powder batteries have cancer causing powder that falls into the pores of the Chinese factory workers skin and gives them potentially fatal diseases

Cost- The cost per 300 mile range for a hydrogen car system is massively lower than a battery system. A hydrogen powered car TODAY that will drive 300 miles without a refill is 50% of the price of a battery car that will drive 300 miles without a refill.

Energy from “sour-grid”- A modern hydrogen system can be charged from a completely clean home energy system.

Can’t make energy at home- Hydrogen can be made at home. Batteries cannot.

Storage Density – Modern hydrogen technology has a massively higher storage density than batteries.

Bulky Size- Hydrogen systems are dramatically less bulky than batteries.

High Weight- The weight of batteries is so great ir reduces the reange of travel of a vehicle which causes the use of wasteful energy just to haul the batteries along with the car. Hydrogen energy systems weigh far less.

Environmental soundness- The disposal of batteries after use presents a deadly environmental issue.

Self Discharge issues- Hydrogen does not self discharge like batteries.

Batteries cause a greater carbon footprint than hydrogen

Battery shills are mostly paid for by military contractors.

The charge-keeping capability of a typical lithium-ion battery degrades steadily over time and with use. After only one or two years of use, the runtime of a laptop or cell phone battery is reduced to the point where the user experience is significantly impacted. For example, the runtime of a typical 4-hour laptop battery drops to only about 2.5 hours after 3,000 hours of use. By contrast, the latest fuel cells continue to deliver nearly their original levels of runtime well past the 2,000 and 3,000 hour marks and are still going strong at 5,000+ hours

The electrical capacity of batteries has not kept up with the increasing power consumption of electronic devices. Features such as W-LAN, higher CPU speed, "always-on", large and bright displays and many others are important for the user but severely limited by today`s battery life. Lithium ion batteries, and lithium-polymer batteries have almost reached fundamental limits. A laptop playing a DVD today has a runtime of just above one hour on one battery pack, which is clearly not acceptable.

Batteries require coal be burned to charge them. One pound of coal has roughly 14,000 Btu of chemical energy in it. Any reference textbook says that. When that pound is burned in an electric powerplant, steam is made, which drives turbines at high speed, alternators are turned, and electricity is made. When everything operates well, all that turns out to be generally around 30% efficient, meaning that 30% of the chemical energy that started out in the coal has become actual electricity.

(The other 70% all becomes various forms of heat, all of which contributes toward Global Warming and other problems). Now we have around 4200 Btus of remaining energy, now as electricity, which is a little over a kilowatt-hour. (It turns out that nuclear power is slightly better, at around 32% efficiency, and petroleum and natural gas turbines tend to be around 28% or 29%, but all are essentially the same.) That electricity then has to travel long distances through transformers and wires to get to your house. If you lived right next door to a power plant, it would be fine, but for average Americans, it turns out that around 60% of the electricity put into those wires and transformers never gets to the customers at the other end! It is mostly wasted because the wires become hot because of all the electrical current flowing through them, and they act a lot like giant toasters! People are therefore not generally aware that only around 13% of the chemical energy burned in the coal in the power plant is actually available as electricity in your house! (The rest, the other 87% all winds up being various forms of heat, all contributing to global warming!)

So, for a pound of coal burned, your house electrical outlets then receive around 1,820 Btu of electrical power. Around 1100 Btu of that can actually get put in the batteries, due to efficiencies of battery chargers and batteries. Of the energy STORED in the batteries, the efficiencies of batteries, motors and gear trains are such that around 450 Btu of that are eventually available at the wheels as motive power. (Remember that this is out of 14,000 Btu of chemical energy that was produced when that pound of coal was burned!)

One watt-hour is equal to about 3.412 Btus, so this 450 Btus is the same as around 130 watt-hours, or, for a 14-volt automotive battery, around 10 ampere-hours of actual usable power. The 130 watt-hours is also equal to around 0.18 horsepower for an hour. Now, this might sound like a lot, but remember that the 14,000 Btu in the pound of coal resulted in this 450 Btu that is actually usable in a car, only about 3% overall efficiency! And the other 97% of that energy when the coal was burned all went toward heating that contributes to global warming.

In contrast, a gallon of gasoline has around 126,000 Btu of energy in it, of which a modern car converts around 21% into motive power, so there results around 26,000 Btu of motive power. POINT: Around 60 pounds of coal (with 840,000 Btu of chemical energy in it) must actually get burned to provide the electricity such that a battery-powered car can do the equivalent to a single gallon of gasoline! (60 * 450 = 27,000) (This is a VERY "losing proposition"!)

That amount of electricity that needs to go INTO the batteries in the car (to be equivalent to that ONE gallon of gasoline) is therefore the 1100 Btu per pound of coal divided by that 3.412 times 60 pounds, or around 20,000 watt-hours of electricity. That is a LOT of electricity! Say you will have 10 hours at night for the batteries to recharge. That means that you would have to have 2,000 watts of power constantly being used and feeding the batteries. For the 14 volt circuitry of standard batteries, that would mean that around 140 amperes of charging electricity would constantly be needed. (NOT the 6 amperes of a good battery charger!) (This huge charging current might actually cause the batteries to explode, unless they are a special and more expensive Deep-Discharge type of battery!) (Batteries in golf-carts are generally wired in series to reduce the amount of current needed.)
Even the house wiring involved might be in question! We are talking about a REALLY impressive battery charger, of course, akin to 25 conventional battery chargers used together, which requires that 1820 / 3.412 * 60 or about 32,000 watt-hours of input electricity. Over our ten hours, we are therefore talking about needing 3,200 watts of electricity constantly coming in to supply your battery charger. Your house electrical service is sufficient for this need, but standard house wiring would not be. If at 120 volts, a constant 30 amperes of house electricity would be needed, where normal house circuits are either 15 amp or 20 amp if heavy duty. This probably means you would need the specialized wiring like was installed for your air conditioner, which uses roughly the same amount of electricity, through a special 240 volt wiring made especially for the air conditioner. This means you need around 15 amperes of input power to provide that 3,200 watts at 240 volts, or about 30 amps if it is 120 volts.

Herein could be a problem, because most houses were built with 100-ampere electrical service If the A/C is running and this battery charger and some other electrical devices, you might get close to the full capacity of the house wiring! The existing house wiring, and even the transformers up on the utility poles, are barely big enough and could overheat at that constant heavy ten-hour load!
We haven't even yet considered the cost of all that electricity! When you think about a constant 10-hour long consumption of about as much electricity as your central air conditioner uses, you probably start to get the picture. But say you are in some wonderful location where electricity is still only 10 cents per kilowatt-hour. We are needing to use up 32 kilowatt-hours (to equal the vehicle performance of a single gallon of gasoline, remember), so that is 32 * 10 or $3.20 of electricity added to your house electric bill, for the equivalent to ONE gallon of gasoline! It does not initially APPEAR to cost anything, and the car merrily scoots around on its battery power. But if and when an owner realizes that they also have to spend at least $3.20 in extra electricity for each gallon of gas not used, much of the financial argument goes away!

You are encouraged to do research to confirm what is described above. It is all true. Did you notice the "worst part" of what is described above? I'm not even talking about the fact that you would wind up paying for at least $3.20 of house electricity to replace each $3 gallon of gasoline! In refining a gallon of gasoline, yes, significant energy is used up, although I have never been able to get a reliable figure. But certainly well under 840,000 Btu of refining energy is required to form the gallon (126,000 Btu) of gasoline. Replace all cars with battery-powered vehicles, and we then would NEED to burn 60 pounds of coal or use 840,000 Btu of coal (or nuclear) chemical energy to produce the equivalent effect of every gallon of gasoline. This is worse, regarding resource energy wastage, than the vehicles that are currently on the roads! (Yes, the energy is used up in a distant place, and maybe it seems possible to be able to be ignored, but that is still a really bad idea!) And virtually everything that does not contribute to the "motive power" winds up as wasted heat energy.

When those 60 pounds of coal were burned to create the needed electricity to duplicate the benefits of one gallon of gasoline, carbon dioxide is also released into the atmosphere. The coal is around 75% of bituminous coal, or 45 pounds of that. It is fairly simple to determine the amount of carbon dioxide that is created when it is oxidized. The amounts of carbon and oxygen have to be in a molal relationship of one to two. That means the weight relationship has to be 12 (the atomic weight of carbon) to (12 + 16 + 16 or 44) (the atomic weight of the molecule of CO2. This means that 44/12 or 3.67 times the weight of carbon dioxide is created, or in this case, 165 pounds, of carbon-dioxide would get released in this process. When a gallon of gasoline is burned in an automobile, it is less. A gallon of gasoline weights around 6 pounds, and it is about 83% carbon. That means that it contains nearly exactly 5 pounds of carbon in the gallon. Again using the 3.67 multiplier, we can see that only around 18 pounds of carbon-dioxide is released.
This means that global warming then would occur around 7 times as fast as now! (840,000 / 126,000 [heat]) or (165 / 18 [CO2]). If millions of people started driving battery-powered or Hydrogen-powered vehicles, it would therefore be a far WORSE environmental disaster than now, causing global warming to become even faster than it already is!

The "Ethanol adventure" of using 1/5 of the total farm crop production of 2006 for conversion to Ethanol, which provided only around 2% of the vehicle fuels we used in 2006, is simply endangering our near-term food supplies. News reports are already (April 2007) discussing higher milk, bread, beef, and many other food prices in our grocery stores, as a result of the massive focus on producing Ethanol. But some weather problem is bound to occur. Where we used to have massive over-production of nearly all crops, our government has planted the seeds of a true food-supply disaster, which could happen any year now. In 2008, it is expected that the amount of America's total crop production which will go to making Ethanol will be 1/3 of everything grown! It is as if we are totally crazy, or that we do not even give any thought to what might be a consequence next week or next month or next year! It really is amazing!

What are called Hybrid vehicles are promoted and sold everywhere already, cars that include both a gasoline-powered engine and a battery-powered electric motor. The promotions for them are unbelievably misleading to the public! They totally ignore all that electricity needed to charge the batteries, but then use the charged batteries to help it get very high fuel-efficiency numbers! People are buying such vehicles (which cost a premium because of their having to include two entirely separate sources of power) greatly because they are told they are GREEN and that they see those very impressive mileage numbers. Those are both very clearly pure lies! As to the GREEN part, we discussed above that the electric powerplant where the electricity was made necessarily produces around seven times as much carbon dioxide and heat loss as a gallon of gasoline produces directly.

As to the mileage figures, well, without recognizing that at least $3.20 of bought house electricity is needed to replace each equivalent gallon of gasoline (eliminating any actual savings), there are a LOT of other details that no one bothers to tell customers! Such as driving a Hybrid or battery-powered car at night consumes far more electricity for all the lights! Far less battery power is left to actually move the vehicle! And no one seems to mention that the battery-mode operation provides only roughly 10 horsepower maximum for the vehicle, meaning only low speeds and rather poor performance. And this deception is INTENTIONAL! TV ads for a Hybrid vehicle that has a 470 horsepower gasoline engine makes it seem that an owner can have his cake and eat it too! A driver who buys a car because it has a 470 horsepower engine is NEVER going to be satisfied with the performance during a 10-horsepower battery-powered mode of operation! There are many other drawbacks as well.

Another stupid-brilliant idea is manufacturing and selling vehicles that will only run on what is called E-85, meaning 85% Ethanol fuel. Again, if there were unlimited supplies of Ethanol, that might make sense. But when America uses up one-fifth of all its farm crop production to provide only around 2% of the amount of fuel that American drivers use up each year, it indicates scary thinking, or lack thereof. By the time the auto manufacturers fully perfect cars that they will be able to sell to run on E-85, and by the time there are enough service stations that even carry E-85 for such drivers, it is certain that some overwhelming crisis will occur (probably in a weather problem and severe shortages of food for Americans), where sanity might again briefly appear and the massive effort toward Ethanol will very suddenly end. For the few people who may wind up buying E-85 vehicles, they will merely wind up having something that might someday go into a museum, something like what happened to the Edsel automobile!

It is really sad that even supposed Regulatory Agencies of the Government have participated in this hype. A car that has a conventional engine, is likely to get the gas mileage that has long been known, somewhat UNDER what the EPA estimates say! But regarding Hybrids, they seem to have just considered the battery-powered miles to be "free" (because no gasoline is used) and they have listed some Hybrids as having 60 miles per gallon fuel efficiency. That is technically true, if you totally ignore the cost of all that electricity needed as calculated above! If they wanted to go even farther, they could set up a really short test procedure where ONLY the batteries were even used, and then they could let the manufacturers advertise "1000 MPG" or "1,000,000 MPG" or more! The person's home electric bill would go off the charts, but they do not seem to see any reason to consider that expense!

There is an extremely heavily promoted new vehicle being presented in the news in 2007. The Tesla Sports Car certainly can show impressive acceleration. However, both the media reports and their own web-site present some information that simply violates the laws of Physics! It would be wonderful if such things were possible, even in a $92,000 car.

Unfortunately, they clearly have done the common "spin" that spokespeople seem to all use today to deceive the public. THAT is really sad. Especially since this particular product actually can probably provide pretty decent performance. Why is it always seen as necessary to be deceptive today?

Using information from their own web-site:
First, there is a small-print, very faint, and very hard to read Disclaimer at the bottom of their web-pages that notes that their vehicles have not yet passed government safety testing, and they say that their specifications might change as a result of that. (By the way, since they have not yet passed government safety tests, they are not yet street legal in any State and could therefore not yet be licensed!)

First, they say that the car can produce an absolute maximum of 185 kW of electrical power. Since 746 Watts is equal to 1 horsepower, this is equal to 185/0.746 or 248 horsepower. They state in the same sentence that that is equal to 248 peak horsepower. That is fine.

They show a graph where the available torque is basically constant over a wide range of motor speeds (which is fine), and the same graph also shows the horsepower curve that is linear, rising from 0 horsepower at 300 rpm and rising to that maximum of about 248 horsepower at maximum speed. That is also fine, and in good agreement with science.

However that information can be mathematically Integrated to determine the actual acceleration, when one also knows the vehicle weight. The web-site gives the vehicle total weight as being 2,500 pounds.

We can first calculate some more things that DO agree with their claims, to show that at least those claims are credible. Let's consider their vehicle top speed. The streamlined shape of the vehicle certainly has a Coefficient of Drag of around 0.3. The total frontal area of the vehicle is around 18 square feet. The claim is that the top speed is 120 mph, which is the same as 176 feet/second. We can simply calculate the total aerodynamic drag from this information (and the average density of air (around one slug mass per 420 cubic feet). It is 0.3 * 18 * 1762 / 420 or around 398 pounds of aerodynamic drag. There is also tire drag which is around another 45 pounds for that vehicle weight. The total vehicle drag is therefore around 443 pounds (at that speed). If we just multiply this drag force by the velocity (176) and divide by 550 to convert it to horsepower, we get 142 actual horsepower as being needed. Given that they indicate that their motor efficiency is around 85% to 90%, and there are mechanical efficiencies of the tires and wheels, this is in fairly good agreement with the roughly 180 horsepower claimed available from their graph at 13,000 rpm (times that efficiency factor). This confirms that the expected top speed is likely to be around what they claim. Fine here.
Let's look at their acceleration claim, of zero-to-sixty in around four seconds (which is impressively fast).

They certainly did that demonstration in what they call first gear, which has a total gear ratio (and therefore torque multiplication) of 14.3. It is easy to see from this ratio that the motor would be turning at close to its maximum revs at 60 mph, so first gear might have been provided simply to be able to show off with this impressive zero-to-sixty acceleration. In any case, they provide a torque curve for their motor, which suggests that it would produce an average of around 160 ft-lbs of torque through this whole sequence. Multiplying this by the total gear ratio gives around 2300 ft-lb of torque, which becomes around 1900 pounds of thrust after considering the various mechanical losses. We have the aerodynamic drag of around 40 pounds average and the tire drag of another 40 pounds to subtract, so we have around 1820 net pounds of thrust available for acceleration. We divide this by the vehicle weight of 2500 pounds to get 0.73 to get the g-force acceleration. This is roughly 16 mph/second acceleration, or around four seconds to get from zero to sixty. This confirms that in their first gear, the acceleration they describe is realistic.

There is actually another factor involved here, regarding a flywheel effect of the motor rotor itself having to accelerate as well. Without knowing the Rotational Inertia (I) of that armature and rotor, it is not possible to calculate the reduction which must occur in this vehicle acceleration, but it must certainly be slightly less than calculated above. In other words, slightly over 4 seconds for zero-to-sixty is then realistic.

The acceleration claim also tells us something else about the Tesla! It has absolutely nothing to do with the matters at hand here, but it still seems worth noting. The acceleration they describe, of zero-to-sixty-in-around-four-seconds, means that the average acceleration is therefore around 0.73G (as indicated above.) On a dry and clean roadway, the best static coefficient of friction is around 1.0. This means that the 1820 pounds of thrust for acceleration must necessarily require roughly that amount of weight on the driving wheels, or around 1800 pounds. If one axle of a 2,500 pound car has 1,800 pounds on it, the other axle has only 700 pounds. This would be an incredibly dangerous vehicle to drive on any curvy roads, if it has that extreme of a weight-distribution. For an actual Licensed highway vehicle, it could not possibly pass road safety tests with such an extreme weight-distribution. Maybe it will be modified before any get onto the road. Which also would mean that the acceleration performance would necessarily have to be slightly less. (It is interesting all the things that Physics can tell us about any mechanism!) (They might also have used extremely sticky tires for such runs, where less vehicle weight would then have to be on the driving axle.)

So the actual mechanical performance of their car is impressive. Again, much of that is because it is a rather small car that is very aerodynamic. Still, impressive.
However, when we get to the charging of the batteries, their claims seem extremely outrageous. They claim that after driving 100 miles (presumably at highway speed) it only takes two hours to recharge the batteries, and by simply plugging it in.
If we do a drag analysis for 60 mph (similar to the 120 mph calculations shown above), we can see that the total vehicle drag is around 100 pounds aero plus 45 pounds tires or 145 pounds total. As above, this calculates to 23 horsepower being constantly needed. To drive 100 miles at that (constant) speed takes 1.66 hours, or 38.7 horsepower-hours of energy. This is the same as around 29 kilowatt-hours of energy. However, getting electricity out of batteries is not a perfectly efficient process, and they acknowledge that their motor ranges from 90% to 80% efficient. To charge this amount in a two hour period therefore requires charging at a rate of over 15,000 watts. Their charger circuits cannot have perfect efficiency so certainly around 18,000 watts of household electricity would be needed.

If this were simply "plugged in" to a standard outlet, it would require 160 amperes at 110 volts! But standard household outlets are only rated at 15 amperes and even heavy duty ones are only rated at 20 amperes! They are talking about so much electricity that at least 6 or 8 standard outlets would be needed to provide enough power! In fact, the very special wiring that was put in your house for your central air conditioner might not be enough to provide the 80 amperes at 220 volts that would apparently be needed to charge a Tesla in the two hours as described.
In this area, their promotion is extremely misleading. It cannot simply be plugged in as they imply. Very heavy duty special house wiring is required to be able to do that massive charging.
From generally known evidence regarding charging batteries extremely fast like that, the internal structure of the battery often suffers and the battery lifetime might therefore suffer. They don't mention what the cost of replacing their battery pack is, but it certainly would be expensive. A moderately similar experimental electric car recently shown to the press has such an exotic battery pack that replacing it would cost over $300,000! Obviously, the Tesla battery pack is not that exotic or expensive, but it clearly would be a significant expense if and when it needs to be replaced.

A Tesla spokesperson was on TV talking about this after the above text was written. The battery pack would apparently currently cost around $9,000 to replace, but she pointed out that battery technology is constantly improving and that cost might drop. She also said that the battery pack lifetime is currently at least two years. It was refreshing to see an honest and open answer to such a question.
Similarly, as discussed much earlier about battery-powered vehicles, the COST of that electricity can be significant. Using Tesla's numbers and this analysis, we are talking about needing to charge around 29 kWh actually into the batteries (in those two hours, after that 100-mile drive). And that due to the efficiencies of chargers, this necessarily requires at least 35 kWh of actual house electricity. If electricity is charged at conventional rates of around 10 cents per kWh, this is around $3.50 for the electricity for that hundred miles. Granted that this is less than the cost of gasoline in any vehicle to go that distance, but it is still considerably more (around triple) what they claim the electricity cost would be.

But finally, the worst part of such an interesting vehicle is that problem described above regarding the amount of coal that would need to be burned at that remote electric powerplant to provide that much electricity. With the Tesla numbers and this 100 mile trip example, the calculations presented far above show that around 65 pounds of coal would have to be burned in that unseen electric powerplant, which would send around 240 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, to provide the electricity for a Tesla to make that (relatively constant speed) 100 mile trip. If a small gasoline engine were used instead inside a similarly aerodynamic and light and small vehicle, maybe two gallons of gasoline would have been required to go that 100 miles, which would have released around 36 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Even if a full-sized sports car such as one of my Corvettes made the trip, with there highway 27 mpg, only 3.7 gallons of gasoline would be used, which would send 67 pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere. The Tesla causes nearly four times as much carbon dioxide to be dumped into the atmosphere than my big-gasoline-engined Corvette would!

Therefore, the Tesla, which is being promoted as being TOTALLY green, in reality causes at least four times as much carbon dioxide to be sent into the atmosphere than if it simply had a gasoline engine in it! Otherwise, it seems to be a rather attractive idea! Impressive acceleration and top speed and decent range. Only the immensity of the charging process, and the consequences of that are such terrible necessary requirements. Like discussed above, NO battery-powered vehicle has any of its own energy, and it requires to get all that energy from some different power source, in this case, house electricity. Even if Tesla is right that electric power companies would give tremendous rate reductions for the electricity because it was nearly all used at night, that cannot stop the requirement that the (remote) electric powerplant necessarily has to cause the release of that 240 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from the coal burned.

By the way, many of the advantages of the Tesla have to do with its tiny size and very aerodynamic shape. Any car that had a more conventional size and shape would require a far, far bigger motor and far, far more electricity and battery size and capacity. If that car had a similar horsepower gasoline engine in it, the acceleration and top speed would be comparable, and the gas mileage would be impressive. The two main differences would be that the range would be easily 500 miles (with maybe an 8 gallon gas tank) and that the weight of the vehicle would be more engine instead of the same total weight of batteries.

The Tesla information is very vague about its battery system. Obviously, they are protective about their own unique advances. But we have calculated here that to charge at the rate they describe, there must be around 15,000 watts of charging that is done. Their literature mentions that their charger works at 70 amperes. This seems to imply that their batteries must be a series battery pack, because these numbers imply an effective battery voltage of around 200 volts. Such a high voltage (instead of conventional cars 12-volt batteries) makes a lot of sense in permitting far thinner wires to be used inside the car and in the charger and connectors, although even 70 amperes requires fairly stout wiring.

I suspect that you will NEVER see any reference to a Tesla being driven at night (because all those light bulbs use up a LOT of electrical power which is therefore taken away from being available for the electric motor); nor being driven with the (included) air conditioning operating. Automotive air conditioning normally takes around 6 horsepower, so the 23 required horsepower for that 60 mph highway driving would become 29 horsepower. This would both reduce the range by 25% and increase the charging time by 30% (as well as increasing the carbon dioxide given off at that distant electric powerplant by another 30%).

I realize that there are many optimistic people who simply say that the detriment of burning coal (which currently provides around 51% of all the electricity used in the US) could be eliminated by CHOOSING to use nuclear powered powerplant electricity instead. First, you don't have any way of deciding where your electricity is made, but second, few people seem to realize that the US already mined essentially all of its Uranium some years ago, and all of the 39 Uranium mines in the US have been closed and completely shut down for some years as a result. We import virtually all the Uranium used in American powerplants! No one seems to know that! (Only a very small percentage is actually from US sources, and that happens to be from the decommissioning of nuclear weapons, for just a few percent.)

There are certainly other even more optimistic people who simply assume that photovoltaic cells (solar cells or PV) can supply the needed electricity. First, such electricity is only available during the daytime when the sun is shining (and Tesla describes recharging through the night). But people who want to believe that have no clue as to how many PV cells would be needed! We have calculated above that around 18,000 watts of electricity would be needed to do the charging that Tesla describes. In a different energy-related page in this Domain, we present the Physics of PV devices, where around 7 watts per square foot of PV cells is possible during bright sunlight around noon. Even under those perfect conditions (noon, no clouds) around 2600 square feet of PV cells would be required. That web-page presentation describes that it is common that around $150 in total installed cost is involved for each square foot of PV cells. This would mean that around $390,000 worth of solar cell installation would likely be required to provide the amount of electricity the Tesla describes being needed! I suppose that if you can afford a $92,000 electric car, you may also be able to afford $390,000 of solar cells to charge it! But keep in mind that this is for NO CLOUDS and only around noon! Even more solar cells would be required for nearly any real climate!

See the problems? Even though that Tesla can show impressive acceleration and top speed, and decent range, and even though it is such a tiny car that the amount of electricity used is only around three cents per mile (while even at 50 mpg with a small gasoline engine, the gasoline would currently cost around 6 cents per mile), the bottom line regarding why it is even supposed to be desirable is allegedly how GREEN it is. But the reality is that some distant electric powerplant has to pump at least four times as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than if the vehicle had simply had a smaller gasoline engine.
The single point for which it is sold is therefore (sadly) totally invalid. It may be fortunate that the only people who will be able to buy a $92,000 car probably have plenty of money available! However, I suppose that most of them will not even be bothered by the need for maybe an extra thousand dollars of specialized heavy duty wiring being installed in their house to be able to charge the Tesla. And their likely lifestyles are such that they will never even notice if their electric bills happen to get a lot higher because of charging their Tesla.

I see it as a wonderful "novelty" for rich people to play with. For the practical reasons presented in this article, it seems inconceivable that "normal" people will ever benefit from such battery-powered vehicles or even use them (except for golf carts and electric wheelchairs).
It would be nice to be able to say that there was any chance whatever that this technology could advance to actually becoming useful some day. But Tesla even notes that they have already accomplished impressive efficiencies of around 90% and 80% at peak use. What a Tesla has is probably about as good as it will ever be able to get. And if it were not for the horrible requirement that some distant electric powerplant has to release massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to be able to charge the Tesla, it actually could be a useful product. But when a product is SOLD and PROMOTED as being totally green, while the actual reality is entirely opposite, it then turns out to be a really terrible idea!

The truly sad thing is that if millions of people could some day drive vehicles that are electric powered like the Tesla, Global Warming would necessary become far worse as a direct result.”

Such limitations have led to an enormous interest in alternative power sources, of which the fuel cell is the most promising candidate. Storage density, i.e. the electrical capacity available per unit mass of energy storage means, is one of the most important parameters.

So you have the well-known battery and competing fuel shills who are anti-hydrogen sheep:
Ulf Bossel of the European Fuel Cell Forum,

Alec Brooks

James Woolsey

EV World

Sam Thurber

Cal Cars

Felix Kramer

Yet for every manipulated argument they come up with, they are shot down by hundreds of sites with facts.

The interventions of these 'doubters' fall into a number of clear categories which I'll summarise as:

1 "You can't succeed because no-one has ever succeeded at this (sports car making / battery-power / taking on the majors, etc etc) before". - May I commend to everyone Dava Sobel's wonderful (and short!) book, "Longitude", which offers a perfect map of the tendency of government and the scientific establishment collude to reject true innovation. This effect can only be overcome when a tipping-point of perceived popular utility is reached, at which point the establishment suddenly has a bout of collective amnesia about their earlier denials. (Same story many times over, historically, of course - from Gallileo onwards.)

2 "It's inefficient to carry around". Rather as it's inefficient to carry around a full tank of gas, perhaps? Or to carry around a SUV chassis which itself weighs a ton or more? (Come on, Detroit, you can find a better argument than that, surely?)

3 "This technology is not a solution and never will be." This very much reminds me of the IBM's famously short-sighted take on the prospect of home computing, back in the 70s. The language of these contributions, let alone their content, points to a thought-process rooted in volume-producers'vested interests. Consider the successes of some other new-tech challengers of vested interests: Dyson taking on Hoover with a bagless vacuum-cleaner; Bayliss bringing clockwork (i.e. battery-less) radios and laptops to the third world; thin-film solar panels (sorry, can't remember who, but you know who I mean). On this point, it was deeply depressing, at a high-level environmental science conference of the UK Government last year, for me to witness a "leading and respected" Professor of Transport rejecting electric traction out-of-hand with the words "it will never be more than just power storage on a trolley". Given that this "expert" was advising ministers of state setting future national policy on alternative transport, my immediate thought was "Who pays this man's research grant?"

So let's be vigilant for any who claim, in a smooth way, that invention can't possibly have the answers. From a position of some expertise in this field, may I remind readers that the "you-don't-understand-how-our-industry-works" argument has been the policy instrument of choice for numerous corporate fraudsters and protectionists down the ages (Enron, anyone?). New York's energetic DA, Mr Spitzer, has made a fine career out of challenging such thinking in the finance sector (with the simple rejoinder: "WHY does your industry work like that? Against customer choice?"). And then of course there's the entire consumer movement (remember Flaming Fords? remember "Unsafe at Any Speed"?). We can and should ask the same questions of the conventional auto industry.

The good news is that genuine innovation will out - as long as ordinary consumers are able to find it and buy it. One of the early lessons of the twentyfirst century, thank goodness, is that the old-school, browbeating style of corporate communication - terrorising one's customers into rejecting alternatives - increasingly fails as people wise up to making decisions based on their own independently-gathered information about benefits and risks. (Interestingly, a popular reaction against "selling by fear" is also now happening in the political field. Now why might that be?) As a consumer, one doesn't have to agree with the in-ya-face techniques of anticorporate critics like Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock to still subscribe to the view that we can buy what we want to buy. We no longer want to be told by old-tech that new-tech is inherently suspect. Isn't it old-tech that brought us dependency on oil, climate change, wars over energy sources?

So c'mon people, how about a reward system for "spot the spoiler"? I'm all for free debate on the issues, but some of these blogs smell rather like the work of paid old-tech corporatists trying to sabotage your success.
Challenge such interventions with the greatest possible vigour, and let consumers decide for themselves!

1.) Battery companies are spending millions of dollars to knock H2
because it works longer, better, faster and cheaper than batteries! Most of the people writing these screaming anti-H2 articles are battery company shills or have investments there. H2 does beat batteries on every front so the should be SCARED!

2.) The steel unions hate H2 because H2 cars don't use steel. Steel is
too hard to afford any more so nobody will use it in any case.

3.) Activists hate H2 because they think it can only be made by the oil
companies and they hate the oil companies. This is a falsehood created by the battery and steel guys.

4.) Oil companies hate H2 because it is so much better than oil but they
only get to hate it unto 2030 when the affordable oil runs out. Then they know they must love it because H2 energy will be all that is left. The Oil industry is dismayed that H2 is coming on so fast and they are trying to slow it down even more.

5.) Other alternative energy interests hate it because it is getting all
of the funding because the polita-nomics are better with H2 than ANYTHING ELSE ON EARTH.

If the gasoline in your car blows up it will do a VAST AMOUNT more death and damage than H2 ever will. You are driving a MOLOTOV COCKTAIL. In 2030 oil is GONE and there is NO OTHER OPTION that can be delivered world-wide in time but H2!

I live in Atlanta. I would like to convert my 2003 VW Passat to electric. I understand there's someone on Charlotte, NC who does this. I am not a DIY. How much is this going to run? I probably just wrecked the engine yesterday, but if I did no frame damage, even if the insurance totals it, it may be cheaper to convert it than try to find a different car for what I'm willing to pay. Anyone?

Why don't you just by some solar panels or a mini wind turbine from Canadian Tire and use it just for charging your car? Then it is zero emissions.

Shelly Carson -

When you post something that huge in the comments it's just rude. Make a darn webpage and link to it. Tell us the highlights if you want, but don't be a comment-pig. Nobody's going to read it all anyway - it will just turn them off to your message.

That said now, let me just say that I have nothing against hydrogen, and it may well be better than batteries, but your treatment of the matter is far from fair. You claim that battery enthusiasts use 1960's data to sidparage hydrogen, but you use 1960's data to disparage batteries. You go so far as to mention A123 Systems, but thier batteries don't exhibit half of the problems you mention.

I'm aware of all the technology you mention , and while I have nothing against hydrogen, my bets are still on advanced batteries - many which are still in development.

Hydrogen, incidentally, is just a disposable battery. If you can store electricity at home in hydrogen as easily and efficiently and quickly as in any other energy storage system economics will make it happen, and there's nothing companies like A123 batteries will be able to do it.

I for one, welcome comments like yours becaue it keeps A123 stock from going through the roof, so I can afford more as I make more money. So keep up the good misinformation tactic. Soon the GM Volt and other flextreme based vehicles will change all that.

Would you people please shut up? I want to buy an EV so I don't have to pay the Saudi's everytime I fill up. I came here to hear from people who've converted their vehicles and how it went for them. Not to read a debate about zero-emissions. Average middle income Americans like me want something practical and cost-effective in an EV. I ride my bicycle to work most days, but when I do drive, I don't want to use gasoline or diesel. So please stop discouraging people from the only (currently) viable "oil-free" alternative available to the public.

I am trying to convince the wife to drop the new Lexus I bought her and pick up a Tesla. When I crunched the numbers, I would recoup my losses in a shorter time frame that what I would for the Lexus. I am tired of the oil game. I don't have the money to buy a big SUV but I do have the money to invest in my future. The only bad thing is the waiting period....

Well: That is certainly an interesting discussion about batteries VS Hydrogen. I am not a shill for anyone. You have covered the main disadvantages of both systems, so I wont rehash them. I think you overstated the cost of electric. And understated the efficiency, (note any Hydrogen system will be either fuel cell, (electric drive), or infernal combustion. All that aside I can buy batteries right now and charge them with 10 solar panels on my garage. I haven't seen any hydrogen making plant that will run off of solar and fit in my garage. That leaves me to fuel up my hdrogen car at the gas station, at prices that will quickly climb to $3.00- $4.00 dollars a gallon and be made from nateral gas by the OIL COMPANIES, THE ONLY COMERCIAL SYSTEM THAT IS CURRENTLY IN PLACE is the catalytic cracking of nateral gas yeilding Hyrogen and CO2 as a waste product. NOTE the H2 produced has a lower specific energy than the CH4 as the C is reacted out (burned) during the conversion. So until then my bettery car charges in 8 hours at 15 amps, and doesn't require any modification to my house.

i was wondering about curb weight. i know this includes the gas engine. i have a small porsche 924s that i want to convert to an electric car. it's curb weight is 2723lbs, but i've found that converting to an electric vehicle is best for a car under 2000lbs. i've also found that converting to an electric vehicle isn't good for a car over 3000lbs. So that would put my porsche 924s into a YELLOW area.

Could someone let me know what that means? I figure the more weight lowers possible power or hi speeds, but if hi speeds aren't an issue, is the power loss THAT significant that I should just leave this car gas powered? If so, could someone steer me in the correct direction towards which type of AC motor I should get? Lastly, should i go with lithium batteries, or gel?

thanks.

What a great Article. (Both from the Author, and from Rebecca. :) I'm going to link to it from my Electric Car Conversion Kits information site.

Let's see some more EV stuff here on Treehugger!

-Frank

There are not EV´s running on streets in my country (Brazil). It´s a shame. More than 90% of our electricity is generated from water (hidroeletric).
Our EV´s would be really zero emission...

Electric cars FTW

Nice detailed article, Justin.

I'm going to Digg this

Has anyone thought of DIY Brushless Motor and Lithium Polymer conversions and noted the cost difference?

Jeremy

Why not use an alcohol powered generator to supplement the recharge on the go? This could use less energy and the CO2 output would be significantly less right?

Who cares about the environment? You should probably care about your wallet and fuelecohomy more! SORTA!!!! Anyways electric cars can still be Eco-Friendly because you can recharge them from solar panels!