Electric cars are a pipe dream

http://evseupgrade.com/

Yeah, those are the Level III (DC) fast chargers. They have to include a massive AC to DC converter. The above is a way to use a Level I (120VAC) cable with a Level 2 (240VAC) source. It gives you 3.3kW charging via the internal charger, which is all the internal charger will handle for now. That's good for about an 8 hour charge.

The Level III chargers I've seen will go to 50kW which will give you about 75% of charge in 30 minutes.

Well, that's why I used the above example. You can make an EVSE for very, very cheap; it's really nothing more than some wire, a GFI breaker and a very simple controller circuit. $100 in parts from Home Depot and Digi-Key. But why would Nissan (or Ecotality) sell them cheaply? When you need them you really need them, and they are so far the only games in town. People love making money.

The 'flammable' part isn't too big a deal, since natural gas is combustible only within pretty narrow parameters and it's fairly easy to detect leaks in sealed compressors. (Just monitor internal pressure.) The speed part is a bigger deal, primarily due to the additional work you have to do on the design to deal with the heat load.

 

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I think you are quoting the price for the pumps used at the NG filling stations - they fill large tanks from which you quickly fill your car - in about the same time required as a gasoline fill up.

By "high volume" I mean ~100,000 per year sold. The Phill pump is expenssive - I think the company only sold few dozen before going bankrupt. Honda only sells 1200 NG cars per year and very few owners have a Phill - most bought their NG car because they have convenient access to one of the 600 NG filling stations and want to drive at a gasoline equivalent cost of less than a dollar/ gallon which will be falling more with the rapidly dropping price of NG.

A small high pressure pump to fill NG car over night is not complex rocket science. It is an electric motor and probably two sequential stages of piston compression - much like a lawn mower in mass production cost, I would think. Perhaps $300 is more accurate, but in any case it will pay for itself in less than a year in avoided gasoline cost. Hell even just one year of avoided tax on the gasoline is a greater expense!

 

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NO!! * It is a slightly modified Honda civic with half the trunk used up to hold the NG tank they stuck in it. There were some very minor modifications to the same old IC (INTERNAL combustion) motor - why EV hybrids are like the Volt, are much more complex - They have two entirely different power systems... I agree with rest of your post.

If it were just now being introduced, there would be greatly more safety concerns about a NG oven used to cook a turkey. People would say:

"You can't be serious! It is very dangerous to let NG into a big box and then intentionally put a lighted match in also. Are you crazy!"...

In contrast it would be hard to make high pressure NG for cars explode - the NG will just leak into the open air and disperse. NG is much safer than gasoline.

I.e. you are correct with the following:

* When I say "a NG designed car" I mean one where the tank is integrated into the body - not even seen - not stuck in the trunk. For example, the tank is a set of parallel, adjacent, small rectangular cross section tubes being a large part of the roof (and / or the floor board or side panels of the car - a great use of space in the new stronger, cheaper 3 door cars - only one door on the driver's side).

If each tube has one unit of cross section area, then there are 3 (not four) sides of 3 unit length for each tube. (Except for the one on one extreme side of the flat panel tank. It has 4 sides. Think of a set of adjoining "Square U" turned on their side with the open end of just one closed.)

A round tube, also of one unit diameter, would have LESS cross section area by the factor of (3.14/4) and more length around (3.14 vs only 3) of requiring material. Thus, this square tube set is a very material efficient design giving a flat roof to the NG designed car. I.e. about 1/3 more stored NG for the same material used as a round tank!

As I mentioned before, the material required for round pressure tank(s) storing the same volume at the same pressure, does NOT depend upon the diameter (the number of tanks used! Many small ones actually use very slightly LESS than one big one does when ends are considered!)

 

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Ah, that's nothing but a cable that allows 240V operation, while the LEAF's standard cable in the first year only, came at 120V only.

The LEAF could always be charged at 240V if you bought the Cable Option, because the 240V charging electronics is in all of the LEAFs.
In the 2012 model year, the 240V cable is now standard.

But that cable is not a fast charger as it takes ~8 Hours at 240V to recharge a LEAF (~20 hours at 120V), so as I pointed out, fast charging is very expensive (and Nissan doesn't recommend you do it that often either)

Nah, the optional cables didn't cost that much to begin with and because so many users ordered them they are now standard.

Agreed, and that's why home CNG compressors are expensive and still take 8 hours to refill a typical CNG vehicle.

Arthur

 

Nope, that's the price of the PHIL home unit.
And it takes about 8 hours to do it.
There is no evidence that the unit can be sold for $300 when the current unit is going for about $6,000 installed.
By the way, the PHIL only has a service life of 6,000 hours, or roughly 2-3 years of mostly daily operation.

Arthur

 

And yet no one makes one like that, even though global sales are fairly high.

Arthur

 

That is because the marginal cost of just adding a tank in the trunk is ~1,000,000 times cheaper than an entirely new design, like the volt.

What I am saying is GM bet on the wrong horse - An NG designed car would need only one dual fuel IC motor, essentially like the millions made each year, not two different types of power systems and be cheaper per mile to drive, plus at least $15,000 cheaper to buy as no big battery cost.

When GM chose the "wrong horse Volt" they did not know the price of NG would be 70% lower before the first Volt was sold. If I had a billion dollars*, I would be seriously tempted to make a NG designed car (a hidden in the body multi-tube NG tank + regular gasoline tank) and put GM out of business if they keep trying to sell the Volt. Some one who has a billion dollars will decide to do that in a few years at most.

* And was 20 years younger.

 

No Billy, it's because the tanks take up a lot of space. Remember they use all the space for the regular gas tank AND half the trunk and STILL the range is only about half of the regular gas car, so no Billy, there is not that much unused space in a car. And NO, they can't put it in the roof because the things are too heavy and would make the stability of the car in turns horrible.
And unlike your previous assertion, there are no cheap extruded plastic tanks available for CNG. The "plastic" tanks that are available are made from high strength composites and are more expensive than the steel tanks.

Well if you are right then Civic GX sales should go through the roof.
But so far, even the pathetic VOLT sales are exceeding the annual GX sales by a healthy margin, so maybe there is something wrong with your analysis.

Arthur

 

You could certainly put the multi-tube NG tank in the floor and / or as part of the rear seats, or in the lower driver's rear side of the 3 door car, where the fourth door is now in most cars. There is NO reduction in trunk space of the NG DESIGNED CAR.

The owner usually will not even know where the NG tube tanks are. Nice thing about NG is the tank does not need to be lower than the fill point as in gasoline car. Some tubes of the tank could surely be in the roof but with most in the floorboard, their Center of Gravity would be lower than that of the rest of the car - improving stability!.

 

Of course the Honda GX does not sell well - It is not a designed NG car, not even a dual fuel car, so is very limited in where it can go - needs to get back to one of the 600 NG filling stations and user must accept a tiny trunk with the NG tank there.

SUMMARY: You comparison of a New NG designed car to a slightly modified and much less useful than the regular Honda Civic is meaningless. Why not compare the NG designed car to a horse? That would be equally valid.

 

Billy, you way over-estimate the free space available in a car and way under-estimate the amount of space the large CNG tanks take up.

And putting a lot of small tanks would indeed decrease safety because of the many more possible leak points in a collision.

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Secondly, you act like that's the only issue preventing adoption of NG cars.
It is an issue, but not a huge one. The first problem is that they is a significant premium to buy one, for the Civic GX its about $12,000 when you include the home refill option and that's pretty much a necessity. Then of course there is the reduced range compared to gas which is made worse because of the lack of places to fill up your vehicle away from home. Making it duel fuel would drive the cost up even higher, add quite a bit to the complexity and require the addition of a gasoline fuel tank which would be even more problematical to the design.

Which is why the vast majority of the CNG cars in use in the US are only in two states and almost all used as fleet cars.

Arthur

 

Adding to what Billvon was discussng on EV fast chargers,I found this current article.

October 7 2011,

"ECOtality Inc.(NASDAQ:ECTY), was trading up nearly 4% Friday afternoon, closing a week where the self-proclaimed leader in electric transportation and storage technologies made two big announcements.

On Monday, the company said it had received certification from Underwriters Laboratories (UL) for its Blink Direct Current (DC) Fast Charge system giving the system the ECOtality Electric Vehicle Charging Equipment (EVCE) safety stamp for public and commercial use. According to the company the DC fast charging system can fully charge an electric vehicle's battery in 30 minutes"

http://www.energyboom.com/transportation/ecotality-inc-closes-big-week

30 minutes is great news and I believe we will continue to better and better all forms of FF replacements.Of course no matter it takes time huh.

 

Well first of all this is not a home unit, it's extremely expensive.

Secondly, 30 minutes is about 5 times as long as it takes me to fill up my car with gas, so while you think it's great news, it's not that thrilling to the average consumer.

Third, rapid charging is not recommended for more than 80% of capacity, so you won't get a full charge with one.

Fourth, rapid charging is not recommended if you want the longest life from the battery, and remember the battery pack is only expected to retain 70% to 80% of its capacity after 10 years .

Which would lower the LEAF's range to ~34 miles (@80%) in the last years of it's life.

Arthur

 

Compresses NG is not a liquid - would not boil to a vapor. As I said it would leak out and disperse. In sudden acident rupture, a multitude of small tube tanks as I described in footnote of post 2125, would be safer than a big one provide they had flow limiting interconnections. Thus they are safer, as well as hold ~1/3 more NG per weight of tank (less material used for same volume of stored gas) compared to one big round tank as is now used. But their main advantage is they can be a flat panel, hidden in the floor of the car and / or be the roof, so no loss of trunk volume.

See post 2125 footnote for math proof of the surprising fact they hold more than a round tank can at same pressure limit with less material used (less weight).

 

It's not a liquid, but it is at 3,600 psi, so "leak out" is a bit of an understatement. Damn near explosive release of the contents if the tank ruptures is more like it.

Billy you make unsubstantiated claims. What we do know is that no manufacturer makes them like in the manner you describe, and the making of these tanks is quite competitive. If this method actually worked and saved so much on materials one would expect to see an example of it.

We don't.

So quit saying that you have solved a problem that the industry that makes the devices isn't smart enough to have come up with.

Arthur

 

Yes, there is: If the passengers remain in or near a car with the back seat (plus other parts?) with such an intense fire that enough heat passes thru the wall dividing the rear seat area from the trunk area and continues long enough to cause overheating (non-uniformly also so pressure relief value fails to function) of the NG tank, and die, that would be blessing for the human race - kept some real idiots from reproducing. ...

I said it was surprising. Everyone educated even slightly about circle having the most contained area for the perimeter should be surprised, but I demonstate the claim IS TRUE mathematically.

Basically these ADJOINING square cross section tubes have larger contained area per unit mass used to make them because they share a common wall.* I.e. around the unity area square, each has only 3 not 4 flat walls of length 1. 3x1= 3 but around the unit diameter circle** the distance is 3.14, which is greater than 3.0 so more material is needed by the circular tank of dimeter 1 than by the ADJOINING squares of edge 1.

Not only that, there is obviously more interior area inside the squares (by the factor 4/3.14 = 1.2711 or more than 27% more contained area. when both the greater contained area and less material factors area considered,(and the one unique 4 sided square on one side of the flat panel tank is neglected) the contained volume to material ratio is better for the flat panel tank than the round tank by the factor (4/3.14)x 1.26 = 1.605 note I reduced 1.2711... to only 1.26 to estimate the effect of one of say >30 adjoining square cross section tubes having 4, not 3 sides.

However, the great attraction of the "flat panel" NG storage tank is not its 60% greater volume to mass ratio, but the fact it could be the car's floor and add only about an unnoticed inch to the floor's height. In a front wheel drive car, it could on average be approximately twice as long as the round tank placed sideways in the trunk (assuming the tubes run from front to back, instead of from side to side.) For more range, another could be in the car's roof, car's sides, etc. (with NG, unlike gasoline, the tank does not need to be below the fill point.)

SUMMARY:[/b] Amazingly the flat panel NG storage tank holds 60% more NG than the round one when both use the same amount of material, weight the same, and have the same bursting pressure limit.

------------
* Note also that the contained volume would double if only this "shared wall"were two units tall in stead of only one unit tall, but the thickness of it (and all the other walls would remain the same as the tension in no wall changes, wheh the cross section is a 2 to 1 rectangle instead of a square. Thus, one can easily make the flat panel NG tank hold more than twice as much NG as a around tank of the same weight. !!!

**Some may think it unfair to compare a unit diameter round tube to a unit edge square tube, but is is not. True a round tube of 10 units diameter will hold 100 times more and have a circumference only 10 times more, but what people who raise this objection are forgetting is that the tension in the walls of the ten times large round tube is 10 times larger so the wall thickness must be 10 times larger too. The volume to requied mass of a round pressure tube does not depend on the diameter. Ten little one are just as efficient as one larger one - actually very slightly more efficient when the fact that their closing ends are more nearly flat is considered.

 

Yes it is.

Because looking around I could find NO square tubes used for containing high pressure gas, only spheres and cylinders.

http://www.google.com/search?q=comp...h&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&biw=1058&bih=423&sei= Ta2qToSPEoKhsQLWwriYDw

That's not a coincidence Billy.

It seems pretty clear (form follows function) that actual engineers and material scientists have determined that while the sphere holds the most pressure for the least amount of material, the second best and easier to make and use is the cylinder.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressure_vessel

Or look at ANY of the manufacturers of CNG tanks, metal or composite, they are ALL cylinders.

http://lincolncomposites.com/products/tuffshell-cng-fuel-tanks/

Arthur