We Don't Need No Stinking Sparky Cars

If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we overcome the laws of thermodynamics? Those first and second laws are cramping our style, and should be revoked forthwith.

I think the maker must be conservative. A truly progressive lord would not hold us back with all of these partisan scientific "rules".

I saw an interview with Obama a few years' back. His views on batteries border on the loony. I wonder if there's someone in the DOE who has been feeding him some dodgy ideas.

It will be a great day when electric cars' batteries can go more than 300 miles on a single charge, and can be recharged in 10 minutes, or under. Until then, the government has to cajole, force, and steal from the taxpayers to underwrite a naive public's use of electric cars.

I'm confident the technology will be found, but it sure isn't there, yet.

I knew my buy in unicorn poop futures would pay off someday! And people said I was stupid ;-)

The sheer stupidity of Stephen Chu and the current DOE is simply impossible to understate. How many times does it need to be said? One more time for the slow learners at the back of the US government room.

There are NO MORE electromotive series waiting to be discovered. The number of elements in the periodic table is finite, and so too is the number of electromotive series.

I find it truly impossible to believe that Stephen Chu has a PhD in physics. This is 1st year undergraduate stuff.

No, Golem, the technology won't be found. Not unless there are a whole new series of elements existing out there that have never been observed or detected anywhere in the known universe.

Rabbit, I can understand Obama's ignorance on this. He's only a lawyer after all. But there's utterly no excuse for Chu.

Heh, the US ONCE put a man on the moon. It certainly can't do it now. The first sign of decadence? Imagining that past achievements and triumphs can still be done. I saw last night NASA's unveiling of their supposed Mars mission capsule. An utterly ridiculous toy obviously not capable of such a mission and clearly just cooked up as a PR stunt, and a bad one at that.

cgh. Aren't you forgetting about unobtainium? ;-)

CGH: I am not a science guy, don't know engineering, electrical or even how to rewire a coffee pot, so I won't dispute what you say. I merely am repeating what I heard from a car executive say about the need to find new technologies to make an electric car really viable. The auto industries are trying to find what will work to replace gasoline. I hope they do, and in my lifetime.

Until then, we need smart people in the US government willing to speak out for the need of more drilling on US soil. And right now!

Otherwise, we'll just keep on circling the drain, going down, down....

"Heh, the US ONCE put a man on the moon. It certainly can't do it now. The first sign of decadence?"
~cgh

They did it on credit back then and they're about to max out their credit limit now which is why they can't do it any more.
When the choice is between scaling back entitlements to welfare junkies and space exploration, the welfare junkies win every time.

After all the money they've invested in electric car technology they refuse to believe they were dead-ended by battery limitations all along.

"The auto industries are trying to find what will work to replace gasoline. I hope they do, and in my lifetime."
~Golem

It won't be in your lifetime if it isn't cheaper than gasoline because the gasoline isn't going to run out in your lifetime.

purple haze all in my brain.

I think everything will work if you wish it hard enough

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/03/jimi-hendrix-biopic-songs_n_1647233.html?utm_hp_ref=entertainment

Hydro-Québec research boosts electric-car dream

http://www.thestar.com/wheels/article/1208066--hydro-quebec-research-boosts-electric-car-dream

VARENNES, QUE.—Engineers at Hydro-Québec’s research institute in this Montreal suburb say they can recharge a lithium-ion battery cell in just one minute.

That speed is the current state-of-the-art for solving one of the big problems with electric vehicles — how to cut the time it takes to re-juice a depleted battery.

The best fast-chargers now promise to do that job in about 30 minutes. With a 240-volt charger — the most common type — it’s hours.

But before you rush to your nearest EV showroom, you should know the breakthrough involves recharging just a single 18650 cell, the small, tube-shaped battery that’s used in many laptops and other electronic gadgets, and, in a pack of nearly 6,700, powers the Tesla Roadster electric sports car................more

Chu is to materials science what Mikey Mann is to Climate Scientology.

Why not solve what really holds America back - in the eyes of many democrats:

Obesity.

Or maybe cancer

Or poverty.

The left moves from one unsolvable issue to the next but not after pouring billions (and now trillions) onto the problem.

Even when we do create a better energy storage system, so what? We are busy closing coal-fired thermal plants, we are not planning the replacement of nuclear when service lives are up, few viable hydro options are on offer, and wind and solar are never going to replace conventional generation - best case they supplant thermal. Where will the energy come from to charge the new wiz-bang this-aint-you-momma's-Leaf?

Meanwhile, in the real world, we'll just keep running IC engines and releasing plant food.

I keep a finger on the pulse of current(pun unintended) battery tech.
Lithium-Ion has hit a wall of capacity, and is not going to get any better.
Petrol or Diesel is better in most ways and saying it over and over again is not convincing the people that believe power comes from Unicorn farts and Pixie dust.
They just are incapable of realizing or understanding that David Suzuki is NOT AN ENGINEER.
Dwright

The auto industries are trying to find what will work to replace gasoline.

No they're not.

CNG could have replaced a significant amount of gasoline and diesel fuel with existing technology, and significantly reduce toxic pollution and smog. It still could at any time.

US refineries have a surplus of gasoline and diesel fuel which they are selling abroad for a very tidy profit. There is good money to be made by preserving the status quo, and no lack of suckers to buy into it. Oh yeah, they'll bitch and whine like spoiled princesses, and continue to buy gasoline cars and gasoline at any price. Stupid sheeple will always get fleeced.

I have it on good word that the oil companies bought out the rights to a superduper battery and threw it in the north sea, or was that lake Michigan????

"Warp factor 10 Scotty."

"Cap'n I keena get any more power, we are out of dilithium crystals!"

I think Chu must be a member of the new choom gang.

"I hope they do, and in my lifetime."

Here is why the battery will not replace the combustion engine. You can hook a gas or diesel engine to a generator and charge a battery and while you are charging it you can drive around or hell you can even fly across the ocean.

Hydrocarbon creates power the battery stores power there is the reason the battery will not replace the combustion engine. Not for many life times.

north-60
CNG is efficient fuel, and likes high C/R engines, but high pressure fuel tanks scare the Safety Nazis My Dad ran into that running LPG (liquid Propane gas) in fleet vehicles.
No less dangerous than a 400 Volt battery, I know.
Compression losses are an issue with CNG but so are line losses for an electric car.
Still no debate over the superiority of petrochem vs unreliable battery boxes that never leave the City, unless they are being followed by a Nissan team.
D

It's easy, just make sure your batteries have their tires inflated to the proper pressure!

You have a choice - you can carry 70pounds of gasoline and consume it while travelling 350 miles at 35mpg or you can carry 435 pounds of batteries (the Chevy Volt) and travel 25 to 50 miles before the gasoline powered gen-set has to start consuming 70lbs of gasoline to recharge the battery and travel 350 miles. The EV-1 of the '90s had over 1300lbs of lead acid batteries and only seated two.

The problem is the Volt costs twice what a Honda Civic, Mazda 3 or Hyundai Elantra do and they will achieve 40mpg or more.

Since batteries are only a storage device, where are you going to get your electricity? The green meanies hate nukes, coal and other fossil fuels and in the US, they are actually destroying hydro-electric dams. Dalton's windmills? Hah!

Hydrogen. Separate the H2O and release the Oxygen into the atmosphere (pure oxygen is a fire hazard, especially under pressure) compress the Hydrogen in a tank and then burn it in any internal combustion engine and the only combustion product is H2O. Endlessly renewable but you need electricity to separate the H2O.

So the future will have Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LiFTeRs) to provide the electricity. China is already working on one that they call a MSTR (Molten Salt Thorium Reactor) which is the same thing. Thorium is much more abundant than uranium and after the decay cycle there is very little radioactive material left. Also Thorium cannot be made into a bomb.

Al-in Ottawa
Hydrogen cycle fuel loop is a pipe dream that gets chased,the inefficiency is (sorry) retarded.
You have to put way more power into creating that "perfect fuel" that you ever get out of it.
Especially with wind farm bird shredding power is that not your next argument?
Meh, try again
D

Unless you've got clean unlimited electricity "too cheap to meter" then hydrogen is just a pipe-dream.
The hydrogen making process is energy intensive and not very efficient. It's best to use the electricity directly instead of making hydrogen. A simple lead acid battery is a better energy storage device than hydrogen.

Comparing Future Alternative Fuels and Powertrain Technologies for Vehicles
http://itee.uq.edu.au/~serl/ITEE%206-11-03.pdf

A smart energy future would be nuclear powered with electrified rail transport.

Steven Chu as energy minister is equivelant to having Liz May as energy minister. He admires Europe for their $10. a gal deterent to driving and proudly peddles his skinny little ass a few blocks to work on a bicycle. Like the rest of obamas inner circle, the man is completely out of touch with the real world and logic is beyond his comprehension. In other words, your typical politician.

dwright, you are correct in that it takes 100,000 joules to separate the hydrogen which now has an energy value of
100,000 joules, you gain nothing in the hydrolysis. You need to spend more energy to drive the compressor to stuff it in the bottle. Then when you burn it in a combustion engine you only achieve 25-30% efficiency so it takes 100,000 joules of electricity to apply 20-25,000 joules to actually move your car down the road. Forget fuel cells unless you are going to supply compressed pure oxygen along with the hydrogen, the sulphides in the air contaminate the membrane of the cell and destroy it quickly.

Eventually in a few centuries there will be no more fossil fuel. I am optimistic that humankind will still be around and want to have tractors and cars and electricity rather than reverting to the days of horses and sailing ships and having only wood as a heating fuel. What then? It takes more energy to produce a gallon of a biofuel such as ethanol, methanol or peanut oil than is in the gallon. Uranium is rare, thorium is far more abundant. An experimental thorium reactor was successfully built and run in the '60s but because there was no military use, you can't make an atomic bomb from it, the project was dropped and everyone concentrated on uranium. Electricity produced by a thorium reactor will be cheaper than from a uranium reactor which is the cheapest source available now.

north_of_60 the study you cited only considered Liquid Hydrogen. It takes one heck of a lot of energy - approximately 30% of the energy content of the hydrogen that is being compressed, to liquefy hydrogen. Without that 30% used for the liquefication gaseous hydrogen has the same WTW as Liquefied or Compressed Natural Gas at around 80%. Another problem with liquid hydrogen is the boiling point is something like 4 degrees Kelvin above absolute zero so the hydrogen is always boiling off and has to be released when the car is not being used. The BMW MonoSeven was a prime example, park it with a full tank of liquid hydrogen and a week later the tank would be empty and of course that hydrogen gas is going up to the ceiling where the garage door opener motor is, with its spark producing relay. Compressed gaseous hydrogen would be more practical and safer. I'll take compressed gas at 3,000psi over a cryogenic liquid at -269K any day.

The study looked at both LH2 and GH2, and in both cases your points are valid.

Al,
sorry TL,DR
and peak oil is a common fallacy from the kool-aid crowd.
Take another trip, yo maybe the next joint will give you more insight.
The rationalization hamsters are calling...

2 I'm P'oed because you tried to drop a pile of Sh!t on me
jerk-off.
'tard
Dright

cgh comments on the space program. Victor Davis Hanson says similarly of the California highway system, that it was well designed and well built, by engineers who are now retired or no longer with us.

Re hydrogen: methane, the principal component of natural gas, has formula CH4; coal, C with lots of impurities; hydrocarbons, intermediate. So natural gas, straigt out of the well, is largely hydrogen. And the compression is easier with methane than with hydrogen, as hydrogen at room temperature is close to an ideal gas and methane is relatively more compressible. That's in the applied part of a thermo course, which the dweebs will never take.

Battery technology? A huge effort has been put into this, and nature simply is not kind. It was difficult to tame lithium (which is a dangerous material, as anyone who has worked with it can attest) and lithium is as good as it gets.

I can imagine God saying, "I gave you coal, I gave you natural gas, I gave you nuclear and hydro too, I gave you carbon and zinc for your electrical toys - and you are STILL not satisfied!"

Why not simply mandate perpetual motion and be done with it? Or would even the most black-hole-dense-light-can't-escape-from-it, thick-headed leftard see through that and give away the game?

"I knew my buy in unicorn poop futures would pay off someday!"

Well exactly.

Furthermore, I think it's time we found more commercial applications for all those unicorns.

Couldn't they draw rickshaws or something green like that?

The material needed was understood some time back....it's yet to be isolated....it even has a provisional name.....UNOBTAINIUM....

I would like a DOE that improves it's efficiency beginning in six months, and 17 days.