Battery Cars

Page may contain affiliate links. Please see terms for details.

Night Train

Maker of Things
Mr Pig said:
Why bother? Why not just burn oil as fast as we can so that it runs out and everyone has to find alternatives?
That is something I suggested a while ago. Either just get it all used or get it used creating alternatives. It will completely mess up our atmosphere but as we are not going to fix it while we can then it won't make a lot of real difference.

I think there is a lot of mileage in cycling and HPVs on the basis they don't need constant feeding unlike horses.
 
The Israel project looks interesting.

Thinking about it more, it could take off first in limited areas - say the Isle of Wight where they would only need a couple of stations to serve the island.
I cannot see the battery change to take more than a few seconds, with the battery just slotting up under the car like a big memory stick. It would all be on a standard format and like betamax small manufacturers would follow the lead (so a big incentive to get in early).

Good point re the batteries. But they can be made as 100% recyclable and may also be able to be of a fairly crude makeup as with service stations aplenty range is not an issue.

The cars can also have a standard plug in charge too - as most people use cars on commutes that are well within the range of a battery and it is only a small percentage of cars that drive over say 50 miles in any one day.
 

Dave5N

Über Member
Smokin Joe said:
1/ People wouldn't buy the cars until there is a national network of petrol stations.

2/ No-one would open a network of petrol stations until there were enough petrol cars to make it pay.

In addition, I don't think putting explosive liquids in a car is as easy as providing a horse with hay.

Petrol cars will not really catch on until they develop a method of filling up as they go along, like horses graze.

+1 B)
 
A

another_dave_b

Guest
Smokin Joe said:
Electric cars will not really catch on until they develop a method of dumping 300 miles worth of charge into the battery in the time it currently takes to fill a fuel tank.
I think it's been suggested that capacitors might be used instead of batteries.
 

Arch

Married to Night Train
Location
Salford, UK
Night Train said:
I think there is a lot of mileage in cycling and HPVs on the basis they don't need constant feeding unlike horses.

Yes they do, it's just donuts instead of oats!;)
 
Location
Rammy
main problems with battery powered cars:

1) the government gets a lot of revenue from sale of petrol and diesel, they're not going to support holeheartedly any electric car development (other than the cuts in VED)

2) the public are skeptical of anything that is not familiar, james may said it best when looking into personal flight on a recent tv series he did, "if anyone went to a company and said, hey i've got a great idea, what we'll do is make a metal box with wheels on it, put some highly flammable and explosive stuff in and you can drive it round wherever you want to go, and everyone can have one it wouldn't happen because of safety" and he's right,

when cars were first built they were dangerous and experimental. I don't think we're going to see an electric vehicle any time soon,

from studdying transport design we came against this quite often - plugging into the mains increases pollution wherever the power is produced (and i'm not convinced we have the space to replace coal and nuclear power with renewable energy) so thats out,

Virgin's trains do it, but they run in a predictable manner, taking energy from the grid to power them and regenerating energy back into the grid when braking.

i've seen vehicles with a small wind turbine on them
the wind resistance of the turbine was much greater than what the turbine could produce and so was running at a loss - that and it occasionally got broken by a pigeon

solar,
well, this does work, it's been proven but hasn't been packaged into anything usable - that and it may struggle a little in the uk...

also, if you buy an aston martin or other prestige sports car, you're not going to be happy with a synthesized engine noise, you want the real thing ('you' being the general populous)
you also want to be able to fix it yourself, something that will be nearly impossible with electric cars.

as it is, i'm 25 at the moment, i don't expect to see electric cars become popular within my lifetime

other options include invade france and use it to produce bio fuel for the UK (the easiest way of producing enough to replace the crude oil based petrol and diesel we use)
 

Night Train

Maker of Things
alecstilleyedye said:
but what about the riders?
I meant the bikes themselves don't need feeding. The riders would be eating donuts anyway whether they are riding or not.:biggrin:
 

Arch

Married to Night Train
Location
Salford, UK
Night Train said:
I meant the bikes themselves don't need feeding. The riders would be eating donuts anyway whether they are riding or not.:smile:

But they eat more when riding a lot.


Well, that doesn't quite work for me, I eat them anyway...:biggrin:
 
Top Bottom