... then it's hypocritical for any American to want their house fire put out or criminals apprehended , and at the same time be anti socialized medicine.

Except there is constitutional authority for the federal government to be involved in the first two. There is no such authority to take over a private industry, against the will of the majority no less.

Government distortion of markets is a bad thing. History couldn't be clearer on that fact. Central planners always fail compared to market solutions. Always.

Just imagine how you'd feel if the government was using your money to invest in perpetual motion. That nonsense thrives without support, imagine how it would flourish if the taxpayers were funding it. A small bias in the market, funded by taxpayers, could make near-unity machines suddenly appear to be financially viable while the underlying technology is just as useless as ever.

I think that's what is going on in this thread, trying to understand the reality of the underlying technology issues without the distortions caused by intervention and tampering.

 

I think what's going on in this thread is a high-jack by a few members who want to distort every discussion about technology that in intended to conserve resources and turn them into an anti-government rant. This is supposed to be against the rules of the site, though the rule is seldomely enforced. That's too bad too, because there are some members who might have good insight to the technology but get drowned out by the same few members who want to dominate and high-jack the topic each time. Guess those who want to discuss technology will need to find another site to do it on.

 

I think that's what is going on in this thread, trying to understand the reality of the underlying technology issues without the distortions caused by intervention and tampering.

Hey, look! An excuse to get back on topic! LOL. Yes, technology issues, that's what it's about. The issue as I see it, is with energy storage. Capacitors don't hold enough energy. Batteries are either too volatile or too heavy, depending on the chemistry. In either case, (less with LIPO) there is an additional issue with charge rates; we cannot recover regenerated energy fast enough. Hydraulic energy storage has been discussed, and apparently already implemented; I have yet to research it, but at first glance it seems like it would about as limited as capacitor storage. I've heard of large, low resistance flywheel energy storage but that idea seems a little too disastrous to be on the road. Nanotube capacitors were brought up, but I've never heard of them - another thing on the list of things to research. I've thought of compressed air energy storage, and I'm not the only one - compressed air cars have already been made, but the conversion losses are horrible and I can't think of a way to swing regenerative air compressor braking - except maybe a swashplate-type variable displacement compressor. So basically I have a lot of ideas but not a lot of information, and I want to hear more ideas. Tater puddin vomited a lot of stuff I'm still chewing on. I'm tossing around variations to the hot suitcase turbodiesel thing, but I don't think it would work as described.

 

... I want to hear more ideas.

To me the holy grail (probably just as un-attainable) is figuring out how to store hydrogen densely and safely, to supply a fuel cell. Liquid hydrogen is only 71 g/L (vs. water at ~1000) and requires impractically low temperatures and/or high pressure to maintain. A container of liquid hydrogen actually contains less hydrogen than if it were full of gasoline, and the gasoline has carbon to burn as well.

Compressed hydrogen is better, but bursting a 10,000psi hydrogen tank in an accident is not something I want to witness.

Some years ago I recall there was hope that hydrogen's affinity for carbon nanotubes might provide an improvement. I haven't heard much since. There's a little about the topic at the wiki.

 

One more idea, for you, Strantor.

How about an all electronic drive where the primary power is generated via a small, high temperature, constant high rotational velocity gas turbine.

The high temperature provides efficiency. The high rotational velocity allows for a small dynamo to provide the hi power for quick starts and up-hill climbs.

A small capacitor bank/battery bank can be used to buffer the high energy from the dynamo before it gets to the wheels. The turbine will run at a duty cycle with a short period (think a mechanical boost converter), and turn on just long enough to top the caps/battery, and turn off till the caps/battery reach a low threshold. Or, it can run continuously for those up hill climbs.

I also envision an electric motor on the hub of each wheel. Either 2 in the front for front wheel drive, or all 4 for 4wd. Each should be independently controlled for speed/torque/turning to provide best traction at all times.

 

How about an all electronic drive where the primary power is generated via a small, high temperature, constant high rotational velocity gas turbine.

The high temperature provides efficiency. The high rotational velocity allows for a small dynamo to provide the hi power for quick starts and up-hill climbs.

A small capacitor bank/battery bank can be used to buffer the high energy from the dynamo before it gets to the wheels. The turbine will run at a duty cycle with a short period (think a mechanical boost converter), and turn on just long enough to top the caps/battery, and turn off till the caps/battery reach a low threshold. Or, it can run continuously for those up hill climbs.

I also envision an electric motor on the hub of each wheel. Either 2 in the front for front wheel drive, or all 4 for 4wd. Each should be independently controlled for speed/torque/turning to provide best traction at all times.

Somebody is reading someone's mind. See this.

 

Somebody is reading someone's mind. See this.

Nice. But I'd get rid of the big battery pack and use the turbine for main power. Just use batteries/caps to buffer the power when the turbine is running.

Or, better, run the turbine continuously (at constant RPM), and simultaneously modulate the fuel flow into the turbine and charge power into the caps/battery, similar to a boost DC/DC converter.

 

Nice. But I'd get rid of the big battery pack and use the turbine for main power. Just use batteries/caps to buffer the power when the turbine is running.

Or, better, run the turbine continuously (at constant RPM), and simultaneously modulate the fuel flow into the turbine and charge power into the caps/battery, similar to a boost DC/DC converter.

I believe turbines are most efficient running at maximum load, not just constant RPM, thus the reason for the design as indicated.

 

Grid driven electric might be the best solution.

Has anyone seen the movie, I think it was minority report, where they were the vehicles in common use. When you got to your apartment building your drive magnets just rotated to take you up the side of the building for an elevator ride.

Just a cursory watch of that movie told me they would probably be lightweight carbon plastic pods, mass produced for a few thousand dollars, which factoring inflation would be less than a thousand in our money.

 

This is rather a tangent to the original question, but if you want to go green, then you need to consider EVs that recharge from non-carbon-based energy sources. Besides the obvious renewable sources, I think the most interesting of these are hot (cold is fiction at this point) small Fusion systems that can generate electricity with no significant radioactive byproducts (not the ITER or NIF systems which are both huge, expensive monstrosities that generate neutron radioactivity and will likely not be practical in the foreseeable future). My favorite design approach for fusion is this aneutronic machine. It is could be built in small sizes (say 10MW) which could be used as a local energy source (no long power lines), and could generate electricity directly from the plasma at high efficiency without having to use the inefficient steam generator-turbine-electrical generator cycle. It's still in the early stages of development, of course, but it's the most ideal proposed energy source I've come across.

 

Turbines, eh Joey? Now we're on to something. Siemens has a turbine claimed at 60% fuel efficiency. I wonder how well that scales down. http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/siemens-claims-worlds-most-efficient-gas-turbine

If the series hybrid used a gas turbine engine that started out twice as efficient as the ICE engine I was contemplating, then the future just got 100% brighter.

 

I think the future will see 4 wheel hub motors, and no transmission. That gives the best possible performance for light weight, low losses, and regen braking etc, not to mention other factors like increased interior room.

That raises some issues for reliability etc, what if one motor fails? How much excess power is needed at each motor for safety and appeasing public concern etc.

The other thing I think will be inevitable on future EVs will be easy change modules. Imagine a small door on the side of the trunk, with a slide out module maybe 1 foot square and 1.5 to 2 foot deep. It could contain a recharger gas engine set, to allow long trips. Or you could plug in a capacitor module for more electric capacity, efficient for city driving. Or plug in a freshly charged Li battery pack for the electri purists, they can have other packs charging at home or at the garage.

That modular idea gives so many benefits. Things like hire and exchange of modular battery packs. Easy repair/service/exchange of gas generator packs. Aftermarket manufactured packs, bringing the prices down and providing more options.

 

That modular idea gives so many benefits. Things like hire and exchange of modular battery packs. Easy repair/service/exchange of gas generator packs. Aftermarket manufactured packs, bringing the prices down and providing more options.

While I agree that modular packs give several benefits and may become common, if by "hire and exchange," you mean the kind of model that small propane cylinders use where instead of getting your cylinder filled you exchange your empty cylinder for a full one, then I don't think this is likely to become economically viable.

Let's say I want to open a battery-pack swap station for EVs where someone can pull in and I will swap out their packs and they go on their merry way. Let's further say that battery packs are completely universal so that I only have to stock one type of pack and that this universal pack can hold 100kWh of energy and that gives a range of 400 miles. You can recharge that pack at home for about $15. How much of a premium would you be willing to pay in order to get a swapout from me? Would you be willing to pay $50 for it? Keep in mind that a gas car getting 30mpg at $4/gal would only cost $53 to go the same distance (and that I am making from pretty rosy assumptions about the pack capacity and energy efficiency of the EV).

But can I sell it claiming that you are going to get 100kWh of energy out of it? If you own a car that can go that 400 miles on 100kWh of energy and you trade out a battery at my store and you only get 100 miles, are you going to be very happy with me? Are you going to complain? Are you going to write bad things about me on your blog and bad mouth me to your neighbors and friends? Are you going to demand a refund? Are you going to do business with me again? Are you going to sue me because 100 miles didn't get you to the next station or town and you ended up stranded in the middle of the desert?

So I am going to have to have a way to test the batteries I take in trade and only use the ones that still have at least 3/4 of their usable capacity and I'm going to ahve to charge for them claiming that they will deliver at least 1/2 of their capacity. So I can charge about $25/swap -- let's be optimistic and call it $30/swap.

Let's say that this battery pack costs $100/hWr, or $10,000 and it has a life of 1000 cycles. That would be an amortized cost of $10/cycle. But can I reasonably expect to get 1000 cycles out of "rental" batteries that people have no motivation to take care of and go gentle on? I wouldn't be surprised to get only half the nominal number of cycles, but let's split the difference and call it $15/cycle for the battery.

So now I can charge about $30 and they are costing me about $30 less a bit for what I can sell/recycle the dying batteries for. Let's say that I can recover an average of about $1/cycle (i.e., I can sell the unusable batteries for $1000). That then becomes my gross material profit but this doesn't include the cost of my time or the cost of keeping my lights on or heating my building or anything else.

Then there's the big risk. I swap out a brand new battery that I just paid $10,000 for and you give me a battery that is worthless. And you KNOW that there are going to be people going out of their way to do exactly that. If that happens just one time in a ten thousand, I'm operating at a material loss.

This is vastly different than the propane cylinder model. First off, the price that I can charge for a swapout is such that I can afford to get a bad cylinder for a good cylnder more than one time in ten and still turn a profit. Then a propane cylinder has a much longer expected life and is much more tolerant of abuse and neglect. Also, I can operate with a small inventory of tanks because I can recharge a cylinder and make it available in just a few minutes. How much money will I have to have invested in battery pack inventory if it takes even just four hours to charge one?

 

Some great points!

OK, I'll admit that a business model for battery hire and exchange is not without some issues. But that is only one small advantage of modularity, other advantages are domestic, to change module type, or to fast swap your own batteries. That applies even more so to commercial users like managed fleets or local delivery vehicles.

And even if we are focusing on battery hire and exchange, that will eventually be a reality too I think, it's just too logical to ignore. Many of the issues can be fixed, like smart batteries (that have readouts etc showing not only battery chaerge but also things like battery ESR, effective capacity, number of charge cycles etc) that will tell the business operator a lot and allow pricing and systems for battery refitting when they are not optimal.

Hire pricing could even be based on how much energy the battery actually records you using from it. So you pay when you return the battery, or "pay as you drive" by some wireless system like the smart phone that will be in the car anyway.

Physically I would make it so the battery module slides out sideways, to about 70% of the way out, but is still supported. Then a little trolley thing is rolled up, and hooks under the battery, and a safety catch is released allowing the battery to be wheeled away. You could have a wall full of batteries or different use modules.

 

The last few years, I've been wondering about this combination:

1. 20 HP gas engine
2. Hydraulic tank, pumps, hydraulic wheel motors.

Just like my mower:


http://www.drpower.com/prdSell.aspx?Name=vpz-27hp


Mine is a smaller 48" cut, 19.5 HP.

It's a little over 800 lbs. and will go 13 MPH.

In one field, I've cut down 2 ft. tall grass/weeds, at around 5 MPH. Plenty of torque.


So, if a guy did a little experimenting with the hydraulic motors....?

 

Regarding the Battery Rentals?
It would need to be a subscription type of service I think.

You have a subscription that works out to the replacement cost of your batteries after 5 years. It allows maybe two swap coupons a week.

Most likely scenario will be that your batteries are used sequentially. You use one battery up at a time, but with an option to draw from all your packs for the maximum acceleration type situations.

Vehicles have at least 4 different packs which helps to keep their weights down. You rotate the dead packs out and swap in good packs.

The rental recharge locations have to also be involved in a sideline like grid support energy storage if they are downtown, or wind and solar farms if they are rural.

 

Regarding the Battery Rentals?
It would need to be a subscription type of service I think.

You have a subscription that works out to the replacement cost of your batteries after 5 years. It allows maybe two swap coupons a week.

Most likely scenario will be that your batteries are used sequentially. You use one battery up at a time, but with an option to draw from all your packs for the maximum acceleration type situations.

Vehicles have at least 4 different packs which helps to keep their weights down. You rotate the dead packs out and swap in good packs.

The rental recharge locations have to also be involved in a sideline like grid support energy storage if they are downtown, or wind and solar farms if they are rural.

There is exactly one viable battery scenario which could be used for all electrics(it is being used in japan for a city based fleet of small delivery trucks): the batteries are "standardized" across vehicles and can be swapped out relatively quickly at "recharging" stations.

For the whole network to be feasible, the government would have to own the batteries and a vast network of charging stations. People would have to pay an annual or per-mile cost to participate. The government would also have to force the EV makers to use the standard battery blocks and make provisions to be compatible with the changing system.

It would probably cost trillions of dollars and in the end, EV's would probably never exceed 10% of total fleet of US vehicles.

But that doesn't necessarily means the democrats won't try to finance something like this....

 

Regarding the Battery Rentals?
It would need to be a subscription type of service I think.

You have a subscription that works out to the replacement cost of your batteries after 5 years. It allows maybe two swap coupons a week.

Most likely scenario will be that your batteries are used sequentially. You use one battery up at a time, but with an option to draw from all your packs for the maximum acceleration type situations.

Vehicles have at least 4 different packs which helps to keep their weights down. You rotate the dead packs out and swap in good packs.

The rental recharge locations have to also be involved in a sideline like grid support energy storage if they are downtown, or wind and solar farms if they are rural.

A subscription with who? Is there only going to be one company that provides batteries? If not, how would you like to have to buy a subscription from a single gas company that allows you to get gas twice a week? What happens when you go cross country on vacation and the company you have a subscription with doesn't operate somewhere along the way. Driving well in excess of 1000 miles in one day is not at all uncommon, even for just a single driver. When I would go out to China Lake, which was 1013 miles, every spring I would one-shot it and I only had to get gas once along the way (and then right after I arrived). If I have a battery pack that can get me 200 miles, I'm going to have to swap out batteries four or five times in a single day. And there are stretches along that route for which the distance to the next gas station was over 200 miles, so the density of swapping stations will have to be considerably greater than the density of gas stations in much of the country (particularly the west).

I don't understand why you say that the rental stations have to be involved in grid support. Why?

 

Some great points!

OK, I'll admit that a business model for battery hire and exchange is not without some issues. But that is only one small advantage of modularity, other advantages are domestic, to change module type, or to fast swap your own batteries. That applies even more so to commercial users like managed fleets or local delivery vehicles.

And even if we are focusing on battery hire and exchange, that will eventually be a reality too I think, it's just too logical to ignore. Many of the issues can be fixed, like smart batteries (that have readouts etc showing not only battery chaerge but also things like battery ESR, effective capacity, number of charge cycles etc) that will tell the business operator a lot and allow pricing and systems for battery refitting when they are not optimal.

Hire pricing could even be based on how much energy the battery actually records you using from it. So you pay when you return the battery, or "pay as you drive" by some wireless system like the smart phone that will be in the car anyway.

Physically I would make it so the battery module slides out sideways, to about 70% of the way out, but is still supported. Then a little trolley thing is rolled up, and hooks under the battery, and a safety catch is released allowing the battery to be wheeled away. You could have a wall full of batteries or different use modules.

I don't know that the hire and exchange will ever be feasible no matter how much information is made available in the in-pack readouts. I think the capital cost of the pack is simply going to be too high a multiple of the profit-per-rental to make it work. Now, there are certainly equipment rentals in which the multiplier is pretty high, but those are a very different model. In those, you return the equipment to the same store (a tleast same company) and are charged for any damage beyond acceptable wear and tear. You also have to leave a credit card or other guarantee with them that they will bill if the equipment isn't returned. Also, those rentals are almost always for sparse, infrequent transactions, not something that someone is going to be doing frequently and regularly. Still, someone might come up with a viable business model.

And I don't think the "pay when you return" or "as you use it" will work, either. Again, unless you are locked in to dealing with a single company, who are you going to pay? I swap my batteries at Betty's Battery Barn part way to Grandma's for Thanksgiving and then again at Chuck's Charge-n-Go just before I get there. How does Betty get paid? How does she get her battery back? What does Chuck do with it? It makes no sense to ship it back to her; he's gonna have to charge it and swap it into someone else's vehicle. Who get's the revenue from it now? Betty or Chuck?

And it has to be kept in mind that the battery pack is going to be under the physical control and possession of people that are motivated to tamper with it. Most people won't, but there will be a market for those that do. Imagine I set up a store and take packs near their end-of-life and then fiddle the instrumentation to make it read as though the pack is nearly brand new. Then I sell the packs at a discount. That would be something that would be rather hard to do currently because the market is so small. But if EVs became the norm, then the sheer volume of the market would be such as to guarantee this kind of activity at some level.

But I agree that making them easily swappable has a number of things recommending it. I don't know so much about the consumer market, though. How many people are going to shell out the bucks to have a second battery pack available? If there aren't very many, then how many car companies are going to standardize on it when it adds cost to the vehicle, to which buyers are pretty sensitive.

I see it as, at least at first, being an option available for fleet vehicles. If you are UPS or FedEx or the like, then it is a pretty straightforward proposition to pre-position small swap stations in the more densely populated areas or just plan the routes so that vehicles can always make it to another office after delivering their load of packages.

 

A subscription with who? Is there only going to be one company that provides batteries? If not, how would you like to have to buy a subscription from a single gas company that allows you to get gas twice a week? What happens when you go cross country on vacation and the company you have a subscription with doesn't operate somewhere along the way. Driving well in excess of 1000 miles in one day is not at all uncommon, even for just a single driver. When I would go out to China Lake, which was 1013 miles, every spring I would one-shot it and I only had to get gas once along the way (and then right after I arrived). If I have a battery pack that can get me 200 miles, I'm going to have to swap out batteries four or five times in a single day. And there are stretches along that route for which the distance to the next gas station was over 200 miles, so the density of swapping stations will have to be considerably greater than the density of gas stations in much of the country (particularly the west).

I don't understand why you say that the rental stations have to be involved in grid support. Why?

The Original Post is in regard to Hybrids. Plug in Hybrids are essentially Electric Vehicles. They should be able to use standardized battery packs.
It is not an unreasonable concept that you would be able to pull out one of the batteries and replace it with a small diesel pack or a microturbine so that there would be no difference between an electric vehicle and a Hybrid, except for what modules they have installed. Range differences between a hybrid and a purely ICE vehicle are non-existent. You would no longer need to use that argument.


Getting over the "can't be done -will never work" and thinking "it could work - how would we do it?" is a very liberating feeling. You should try it.

Regarding the grid support, there is a strong argument for putting large parts of the urban environment on a UPS. Generators are used for hospitals and other essential locations already. But Grid Support is also about buying cheap off peak power and storing it. Being able to buffer against peak demands would help keep power stations running at peak efficiency, without needing load adjustment startups and shut downs.
It also makes renewable solar and wind power much more feasible.

You have maybe 20 "gas" stations in a city that each stock 250 x 40kWh standard vehicle battery packs for swaps. Having that available to feed back into the grid will mean that 200MWh of power is waiting there. For fair play because people being people, every blackout will see people rushing to swap their batteries, you don't want to plan on using all of that power. Many of those people will just drive home and plug into their house. It turns into grid support anyways.