On 16/03/2011, at 11:23 AM, Mike Borgelt wrote: > At 08:42 AM 16/03/2011, you wrote: > >> I'm not an expert in this realm, Mike. Nor claiming to be. I'm just an >> occasional customer of the airlines (directly and indirectly). >> >> To address the implicit statement that I'm a hypocrite for being involved in >> the airfreighting of an EV, I'll also note that the next tens of thousands >> of EVs are more likely to turn up via sea freight than air freight, but the >> first few into the country were brought in to meet commercial deadlines for >> various reasons designed to show them to the general public at key public >> events as a part of starting a new market in a new technology. > > > Who said anything about hypocrisy? I was intrigued by the multiple times. I > know you have 2 Tesla roadsters. I guess that's "multiple" unless you've had > one back to the factory for some reason.
One brought to Australia at my expense (USA spec, LHD), spent a year here promoting EV's at my personal expense, then sent it back to California because I couldn't get it road registered here (LHD is a problem in Australia unless your car is RHD or a dual control road sweeper) The second one is the first road legal RHD example in the country. Brought out that way by Tesla at their expense as part of setting up operations here (they are now operational and taking orders for cars in their own right in Australia, ex Sydney). > Trouble is when you do the numbers it always turns out you pay at least 3 > times as much per kilometer as for petrol or diesel. I've never seen anyone present numbers to make that argument. Your numbers must be different to mine. > BTW from where do you plan on getting the electricity for recharging? At > present in Australia EVs are coal powered cars. Sorry Mike but you're dead wrong there. Click here: http://twitpic.com/35f2kq My EV is powered by solar generated energy. Hence your statement "At present in Australia EV's are coal powered cars" is manifestly false, by specific demonstration (mine isn't powered by coal). The array on my roof averages about 45 kilowatt hours generated per day (peaking at 65 kWh on a decently sunny day). About 50% of that is pushed back into the grid each day, the rest consumed by the house and related infrastructure. Including recharging a 30kWh battery array for backup and/or fully off-grid operation on my site at my option: https://www.sunnyportal.com/Templates/PublicPageOverview.aspx?plant=77a17c6e-e5c7-4279-902b-e13b3c32a93c&splang=en-US The average I need to run the car on a work day is around 5 kilowatt hours, which I can either pull from the grid overnight (off peak, using otherwise wasted energy in the coal-fired power stations idling overnight), or from the battery string on site if I have to prove a point to a nay-sayer. I have the choice, which is nice (and increases my flexibility), and the inefficiency in charging one set of batteries during the day and then moving it into the car at night doesn't matter a lot when I am generating far more power than I personally need to use for this purpose. When we get the Tesla Model S, then we'll get rid of the other petrol burner and the whole household will be driving on solar generated power. Of course, it took energy to make the solar panels, and at this point you're probably going to tell me that the embedded energy to make those panels makes the whole thing worthless to even start, and we might as well give up and just keep destroying the planet by burning shit endlessly instead. The same logic would have us burning our sailplanes and giving up on that as well. > Adrian has done the numbers and thinks the end to end efficiency is lower > than for IC powered cars. > Adrian who? And... thats lovely. I'm sure we could have a debate involving duelling calculations on web sites all day. I have read plenty of calculation sets that assert that EV's are more efficient - and that with even very conservative assumptions, they are 'not worse' - and clearly they are at the start of their evolution in this regard, compared to IC's being at the far end of theirs. Here is just one such web site, for what its worth, and its relevant to me because its about the car I own: http://www.teslamotors.com/goelectric/efficiency Want the same thing in more detail? Sure, here it is: http://www.stanford.edu/group/greendorm/participate/cee124/TeslaReading.pdf In the real world, I drove one of these cars from Darwin to Adelaide and demonstrated that the direct fuel requirement into a diesel generator used for the exercise was below 4 litres per 100 km, in practice, including all the obvious losses in generating power from a small diesel installation for local delivery to the car, vs the more efficient approaches available in higher scale generation. And when you tell me the diesel generator had to be transported, I get to say 'sure, just like the diesel in the underground tanks at the petrol stations along the way' had to be transported. You have to set the apples-to-apples comparison fairly (most people don't). The underlying efficiency in terms of power I fed into the car compared to the embedded energy in petrol worked out to be the equivalent of about 1.5 litres of petrol equivalent per 100 km. The rest got lost as heat and overheads (including it being a three phase generator and my car being single phase charging, meaning we could have hooked two more cars onto the generator for scarcely more fuel burn). Apologies if my real world experience conflicts with your presumptions. I can't help that. Or maybe I'm totally wrong. I accept that I may be. But my fuel bills for the trip seem to bear my statements out and the car didn't get to Adelaide any other way. > At present EVs are a hobby and until we get some radical improvements in > electric power sources they are likely to remain so. As ever, the problem is > the power source. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree about flexibility being a bad thing. I see it as an opportunity. If I lived in Tasmania then even my grid sourced power would be highly efficient (with a large chunk of it generated by Hydro). An increasing amount of power generated in Australia is from natural gas, and in SA there are those pesky wind turbines popping up all over the place too. A fleet of EV's improves 'well to wheel' efficiency with no action by the driver, as the grid becomes more efficient in its generation sources. Meantime, your petrol or diesel car can only burn what it burns - and it can never become more efficient. But I guess your comment here comes from the previous assertion (that I don't accept), the one that says EV's are currently less efficient 'well to wheel' than IC's are. This statement (to which I'd be interested to see the proof if you have it) does conflict with my understanding of reality. As above, my car in particular uses electricity generated from the sun. Y'know, the way our gliders gain energy - solar energy. Good stuff that, it doesn't even generate any pollution doing it. Fancy that. An electric self-launcher can be recharged mid week on solar panels. Or it can be recharged from the grid. Or from a genset on the field. Whatever works. A petrol based one can only burn fossil fuels. I see the choice as positive. > Everything else about EVs is solved engineering. As for electric aircraft, > for gliders it only just makes sense. Even then you will be flying at quite > high wing loadings with limited retrieve range. You will be able to get to an > airport or landing strip which at least avoids the outlanding hazards. Time > will tell about battery cycle/calender life. For manned powered aircraft > forget it unless you just want to fly around the airfield a few times. The > electric aircraft designs I've seen are for just that or have powered glider > characteristics which means they would work even better with a small IC > engine. Electric is great for models and some types of UAVs. > Ten years ago nobody had an electric self launcher on the market at all. Now there are three of them (that I'm aware of). I insist on seeing that as a positive progression for our sport (which is theoretically what this mailing list is about), because I personally find the IC engine in my self-launcher glider is the source of huge amounts of expense, angst, and issues with the maintenance of something far more complex than then entire rest of the aircraft. I am highly interested in self-launching using batteries and an electric motor because then I will be able to life my soaring life without ever again having to care about 5 yearly rubber fuel hose changes, engine tuning, or engine overhauls. So I don't see the maintenance overheads of even a small IC engine in a glider as a positive. In ten years from now, I'd be happy to bet that electric driven propulsion will be more, not less, advanced than it is now. Battery technology keeps quietly getting better - at around 10% per annum, I believe. Anyway - I've said enough (probably too much). Time to talk about soaring on a soaring list, so I'll leave y'all to that in peace at this point. Always Happy Landings, Simon _______________________________________________ Aus-soaring mailing list [email protected] To check or change subscription details, visit: http://lists.internode.on.net/mailman/listinfo/aus-soaring
