electric/water powered cars coming yet?

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science man

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Ok I know electric cars have been made, but when will they become popular and go as fast as a sports cars (and I mean pure electric not hybrid that doesn't for me)? Also, when will hydro powered cars be made and become popular. These are simple things that need to be done in the auto industry. Why do I say simple you ask? Because the next step up requires some figuring out. The next step would be flying cars.
 
Here is the Tesla sports car that you can buy now. It is all electric and will go over 120 MPH.

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I predict they will never become popular. The problem is energy, not the internal combustion engine or technical issues.
 
The first all-electric family car is the Nissan Leaf, due to be sold in the USA towards the end of this year.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Leaf

The Tesla is a great car, without doubt, but too damn expensive for most of us.

What do you mean by hydro-power? There is no way of extracting energy from water without putting energy in, like steam cars. Do you mean steam cars? If so, where is the energy coming from?
 
It's pretty inevitable that we get widespread electric car use at some point. Give it 10-15 years.

Sports cars are a weird branch of engineering, and we've gotta walk before we can run, so don't hold your breath for more Tesla Roadster types.

Water isn't a fuel, I don't know where you got that idea from. Maybe you misunderstood the concept of Hydrogen fuel cells? The main problem with those at the moment is hydrogen storage and hydrogen production. Thousands of chemists are working on hydrogen storage molecules, and also "artificial photosynthesis" catalysts, which would split water and CO2 to give H2, O2 and remove CO2 from the air.

Steam cars, well, they didn't catch on a hundred years ago, and I don't really see people shovelling coal into their sedan :p For lorries or buses, well, possibly, if electric types are not available in time it might be a stopgap measure.

If artificial carbon-neutral oil from algae or similar tech becomes viable then maybe we'll never see electric cars.

Maybe the whole concept of a car as something anyone can own will be a passing phase in history, if none of the problems are sufficiently solved. Publicly owned mass-transit-systems, yeah, but no cars.
 
Air powered cars are grossly inefficient, because of all the energy lost compressing and decompressing gas. Electric battery cars are the most efficient option available

Ia a biofuel industry member I can tell you that in the long run we will loss to electric cars! Biofuels are at best getting the specialty fuels and material products.
 
Eventually electric cars will be commonplace,its just there has been a lot of dragging of feet due to our addiction to oil and gas.A hard habit to break.We could have been much further along but have chosen not too,change for many is resisted.The same could be said for renewable energies.I believe the US is the farthest behind of the developed Countries,again by choice.
 
science man said:
ok then what about hydro powered?
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There is no such thing. Even a car that runs on compressed air needs to have an energy source to compress the air. Sure, electric cars might clean up the local atmosphere, but they still need energy from somewhere, which usually means coal-fired power plants.
 
Hydro powered cars...Never. Steam reformation of natural gas is the preferred method of hydrogen production. It is the fastest, most cost effective way for hydrogen production. Even Honda's home hydrogen refilling stations work off steam reformation of natural gas.

Electrolysis is the absolute last resort in hydrogen production because of the massive amount of energy it consumes. Acid/metal combinations are used before electrolysis.

Flying cars...I'll put that down as never too. You need to find the source of gravity and create some sort of anti-gravity drive for flying cars to work. And, no, there aren't any flying cars on the market right now. Those are all road drivable airplanes, so don't bother to link them or show pics. If you must land & take off from a runway (either private runway or public airport) that makes it an airplane.

Add to the fact that people can't safely drive in 2 dimensions right now, adding the 3rd dimension would be a nightmare.

Electric cars...you will always need an onboard generator or your car will never be anything than a commuter vehicle. Drive a battery powered car 40 miles on a charge and then be down for 3-8 hours while it recharges is not a viable option for a traveling vehicle.
 
spidergoat said:
There is no such thing. Even a car that runs on compressed air needs to have an energy source to compress the air. Sure, electric cars might clean up the local atmosphere, but they still need energy from somewhere, which usually means coal-fired power plants.
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Even if 100% coal power was providing for electric cars the total pollutants emissions would be lower then a gasoline car (though assuming 100% coal it would be on par with a high end hybrid car). The advantage of electrics is that they can run on what over powering the grid, be it coal, natural gas, nuclear, wind, solar, etc, in fact electric cars could operate off of off-peak power and alternative energy peaks, charging when demand on the grid is low and inputs are high.


TBodillia said:
Electric cars...you will always need an onboard generator or your car will never be anything than a commuter vehicle. Drive a battery powered car 40 miles on a charge and then be down for 3-8 hours while it recharges is not a viable option for a traveling vehicle.
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For one try reading the tesla web site, they are selling right now a car that can make it 230+ miles on a single charge and 4 hours to re-charge, and are planing to sell a sedan that can make it ~300 miles with 45 minute charge time. Sure it would be a bummer charging at a gas station, but you can't refuel your car with gasoline at home, you can recharge your EV at home: would never need to see a gas station again.
 
Just to add to that. There are lithium batteries being tested right now, using nanotechnology to increase electrode surface area, that can be recharged in 5 minutes.

Imagine having an electric car that can drive 250 kms on a single charge, and then recharge in 5 minutes at your local friendly cafe and recharge centre.

For safety reasons no-one should drive for more than 2 hours continuously, anyway. So we recharge each 2 hours, while relaxing with a coffee. No problem. 80% of all car use is for short trips anyway, and recharging will not even be an inconvenience for most people.

Also note the costs of electric vehicles compared to petrol. My present petrol driven car costs 25 cents in petrol per km travelled. An electric car will cost 2 cents per km for the electricity.
 
Well charge times that fast are going to limited by electronics supplying the power, I don't think its going to be possible to get power lines capable of pumping megawatts into an electric car to achieve 5 minute charge times.
 
So why not have carbon fiber tanks storing hydrogen in every car with a possibility of hydrogen generation right inside a car either by electrolysis from solar energy or by chemical means? It would be great to have a hydrogen fueled car because it would have so much more energy than lithium batteries can hold possibly.

Hydrogen power station, refuel the tank with hydrogen and voila.
 
draqon said:
So why not have carbon fiber tanks storing hydrogen in every car with a possibility of hydrogen generation right inside a car either by electrolysis from solar energy or by chemical means? It would be great to have a hydrogen fueled car because it would have so much more energy than lithium batteries can hold possibly.

Hydrogen power station, refuel the tank with hydrogen and voila.
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1. Hydrogen is inefficient to make, electrolysis is 75% efficient, PEM fuel cells are ~50%, total 38%. Compare that to L-ion batties which common place get greater then 90% total recharge/discharge efficiencies.

2. Hydrogen fuel cells are very expensive and prone to maintenance problems, baseline prices for prototype fuel cell cars are often in the ~$1M range, with electrics cars now in the $50K-100k.

3. Hydogen has great energy density by mass, but poor as shit energy density by volume, you would need some big fuel tanks at very VERY high pressures to get good driving range.

4. Hydrogen burns, it will make gasoline fires look quaint, it will be a very rapid exploding blast in a car crash, but at least you be blow apart rather then burned slowly to death, I guess that is an improvement over gasoline. As for lithium ion, they have been passivized, there no way those are going to burn unless you pour gasoline on them and light them on fire.

5. Why make hydrogen fuel stations and infrastructure when the electric infrastructure is already installed and ready? Heck we could replace 80% of our cars electrics, charge them off off-peak power without the need to a single new power plant!
 
ElectricFetus said:
Even if 100% coal power was providing for electric cars the total pollutants emissions would be lower then a gasoline car (though assuming 100% coal it would be on par with a high end hybrid car). The advantage of electrics is that they can run on what over powering the grid, be it coal, natural gas, nuclear, wind, solar, etc, in fact electric cars could operate off of off-peak power and alternative energy peaks, charging when demand on the grid is low and inputs are high.
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True, but ultimately irrelevant. We don't have an electric grid that can run all our cars, and no combination of alternative energy sources are adequate to do so at the scale to which we have become accustomed. Which means that instead of working to create the technology to maintain the status quo, we should be planning socially for a way of life that is not built around the automobile.
 
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