Lawrence Rhodes via EV wrote:
I've now heard all the talk about 5 minute quick charging batteries
and the 1 megawatt per car requirement. It's time to stop the
madness. As much as I love Tesla all their models are big energy
pigs. 85KW! Yes much better than a gas car of any size but when
there are vehicles that can go further on less energy why not use
efficiency and not sheer battery size to attain your goal...
I think the engineers need to put their thinking caps on, reduce the
weight of every vehicle, make the CD of all new vehicles .16 or so
and stop making these energy hogs. Efficiency not Mega Watts.
I agree completely. I don't see it as engineer's fault; they just build
what their bosses say they want. And their bosses say to build what they
think consumers want.
Many of today's problems stem from our love of brute-force solutions. It
seems that society has developed a warped sense of beauty. In the past:
"We ascribe beauty to that which is simple, with no superfluous
parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all
things, and is the mean of many extremes." Ralph Waldo Emerson
But today, many consider beauty to mean more, More, MORE! Bigger,
faster, more complex, more parts, more features (regardless of whether
they will ever be used)... the *extreme* in everything.
So the Tesla is a wonderful car. Extreme in everything; speed, range,
features... and price. It's great for the top 1%, but it won't do
anything for the vast majority of drivers on the road, or for society in
general.
I believe in Amory Lovins' "hypercar" vision. Make cars that are half
the weight, and you can halve everything else as well. Half the
materials, so it's cheaper. Half the energy needed to move it down the
road, so half the half the environmental impact. Use technology, not
brute force, to make it stronger and safer. Simplify, so it's easier to
fix and lasts longer.
The Stella is a great example. So was the GM EV1 (though a bit on the
heavy side). The Solectria Sunrise EV2 that I'm working on now is also
going in this direction. A full-size 4-seat car that only weighs 1600
lbs, still passed NHTSA crash testing, and was doing 300 miles on a 25
KWH pack 20 years ago!
--
A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is
nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
-- Antoine de Saint Exupery
--
Lee Hart, 814 8th Ave N, Sartell MN 56377, www.sunrise-ev.com
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