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Toe.... the hitters have controlled the country from day one. Nothing changed since the 1700's.
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While the problem has always been there, it is greatly more pervasive today.
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Bottom line is a vote counts more than money. At my polling place your lucky if 30% of registered voters show up. Be it a national, state or local vote,, or all three.
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Little surprise, given that the candidates people are usually inclined to be enthusiastic about tend to be shut out of elections thanks to all sorts of legislation put in place by the 'two' parties. Just getting on the ballot for a presidential bid takes copious amounts of money, and to a lesser extent, getting a chance for representative or senator in most states. Money can control who is even available on the ballot. Nader knew this all too well, and even local greens and libertarians in my state are all too aware of this. They have popular support on the very rare occassions they get positive media support, but can't ever realistically hope to amass the signatures they need without tens of thousands of people helping them. Sure, you can do write-ins in most places, but realistically, there is virtually no chance of such a thing being successful on a large scale.
If it were that easy, things would have changed long ago.
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I have polled them on using electric cars or large trucks. They do seem open to that if battery tech could get up to speed, recharges would be 30 mins or under and the power could be bought like dino fuel on every corner.
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You've confirmed yourself what others before you already have: given the right conditions, the demand for EVs is huge! A study titled "The Current and Future Market for Electric Vehicles" found that the market for an 80 mile range, highway capable EV that was competitively priced with similar gas cars was 12-18% of California's car market with a 95% confidence interval. This is over 150,000 cars per year in just one state alone. 80 miles range is doable on cheap lead acid batteries, BTW. Today's Li Ion tech can do 3 times that, 90s era NiMH and NiCd twice that. Imagine what that calculated market share would be if that study were repeated for 150 miles range and 300 miles range, respectively. The auto industry simply refuses to make them.
We've had the battery tech since the 1990s.
The Ovonic and Panasonic NiMH offered 60 Wh/kg specific capacity, 300W/kg specific power, would be $220/kWh in automotive volume according to UC Davis and $150/kWh in volume for 20,000 cars per year according to ECD chairman Robert Stemple, and according to UC Davis, 1,750 cycles to 100% discharge while Cobasys is more conservative claiming 1,200 cycles to 80% discharge. Nickel based batteries tend to have a shelf life in decadesA study by Cuenca and Gaines found that assuming 100,000 miles battery life and automotive volume, a NiMH equipped EV would achieve cost parity with an otherwise identical gasoline powered car at under $1.30/gallon gas, factoring battery replacement. Aerovironment developed chargers that could charge NiMH packs from 0-80% in under 15 minutes. A testament to the longevity and resilience of this battery, Southern California Edison has a fleet of RAV4 EVs, some of them approaching 150,000 miles on their first pack with little or no degridation, many over the 100k mark. These packs are 10 years old, showing almost no signs of wear. In the Honda EV+, they gave about 140 miles range, Solectria Force Sedan about 200 miles, GM EV1 about 150 miles, electric Ford Ranger about 80 miles, Solectria Sunrise over 350 miles, and RAV4 EV about 100 miles. NiMH basically would give about 100-150 miles range per charge in full size cars or small SUVs with no attention to aerodynamics, and about 300 miles per charge in ultra efficient cars. It offered enough performance to give the EV1 135 horsepower and 0-60 mph in 7.5 seconds. NiMH could match the performance of commercially available IC cars when a big enough motor and controller is there to use it.
Li Ion offers 150 Wh/kg, 500W/kg, and according to Argonne National Laboratories would be $250/kWh in automotive volume. They aren't as robust or long lived as the above NiMH, but are good for about 7-10 years and/or 500 cycles to 100% discharge. This has potential for 100,000-150,000 mile pack life or so, and in typical use of about 12,000 miles per year, would offer cost parity with gas cars at about $2.50-3.00/gallon gas. It offers greatly improved range and horsepower over NiMH though. It allows the Tesla Roadster 250 miles range, Eliica 200 miles range, KAZ 200 miles range, Venturi Fetish 220 miles range, AC Propulsion TZero 300 miles range, ACP Ebox 150 miles range, Mitsubishi Eclipse EV 250 miles range. Basically, 200-300 miles range in normal cars with no attention to aerodynamics, and in theory, 600+ miles range in cars that do address aerodynamics. Li Ion can accept fast charge even better than NiMH, with Mitsubishi's FTO EV prototype having travelled 1,250 miles in a 24 hour period, including stopping to charge(20 minute charging time with fast chargers). With enough power, today's state of the art Li Ion by Altair Nano and other companies can be charged in under 10 minutes. Performance? With the TZero doing 0-60 in 3.6 seconds, Eliica capable of hitting 250 mph, Tesla Roadster doing 0-60 mph in 3.9 seconds, it is not a stretch to say that Li Ion can blow the performance of ICE cars away.
If Altair Nanobatteries claims are true, Li Ions that last 10,000 cycles and have a shelf life in decades like nickel based batteries do may be in fact reality today. Supposedly, these can be charged in 15-30 minutes. I recall them claiming $400/kWh in automotive volume. A pack of these in any mass produced EV would be expensive, but if their cycle life claims are true, the overall operating costs of the vehicle will be so low that this additional cost will be offset and then some. But that's a big if. Compared to Li Ion, NiMH is tried and true.
To get an idea how large a pack you need, a midsize car or small SUV with no attention to aerodynamics will need about .25-.3 kWh per mile from the battery pack, sports cars about .15-.2 kWh/mile, pickups and large SUVs about .4 kWh/mile. With attention to aero, you could cut these figures by about 40%.
For the record, Southern California Edison attempted to develop EV fast charging infrastructure all throught California and along Route 66 to make long distance travel by EV practical, even if equipped with lead acid batteries. The oil industry managed to get the politicians to prevent SCE from raising the funds to develop it.
The NiMH battery has also been suppressed by Chevron. Cobasys just won't sell them to anyone but OEMs. But OEMs are refusing to mass produce EVs at this time. This effectively shuts this battery out of the market to any of the small companies willing to produce EVs and any hobbyists wanting access to this chemistry.
Panasonic, who met market demand for this chemistry, was sued after Chevron gained their stake in Ovonics from GM. Panasonic had an entirely different battery, but the courts didn't see things this way. If you look at the patents Ovonics has, you can see that they lay claim to 'A sealed prismatic metal hydride battery greater than 10 Ah in size'.
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-P...&RS=PN/5558950
10 AH is the limit without infringing upon the patent. This is important, since if you charge NiMH in parallel, they will get horribly unbalanced and strings that reach the final charge voltage first will begin to draw more and more current until they go into thermal runaway. So the easy solution seems to just build a high voltage pack, right? You run into limitations on your pack voltage since the EV motors and control systems available are generally built to operate between as low as 48V and as high as 600V. 600V*10AH is only 6 kWh, hardly enough for even a decent PHEV.
When Cobasys is willing to license its large format NiMH, it is for non propulsion applications only.
http://www.ovonic.com/news_events/5_...s/20050601.htm (Go to archive.org and put the link in, as it's no longer up on Cobasys site)
The patent holder has a right to limit production if they are going to use the patent to sell the invention and gain from it. If they don't, they eventually have to let others access it. Engineers who design embedded systems know this all too well. Our patent system wasn't devised to suppress innovation, but to encourage it. What is being done with this patent is technically illegal, but no one is going to take Chevron or anyone else to task. In light of peak oil, resource wars, global warming, air pollution concerns, and others, you can thank the oil company for helping ensure we don't have EVs available.
There is another factor at play in why we don't have access to this battery. When Ovshinsky wanted to reveal to the public the capabilities of his invention, the auto industry and USABC were none too enthusiastic. The Big 3 in fact used the USABC to attempt to silence Ovshinsky. Michael Shnayerson writes in 'The Car that Could' Ovshinsky stated, 'They tried to stop us from going to California. They threatened us! I said to them, ‘Look, the Communist Party no longer runs the world. A party line cannot be imposed upon people who don’t believe in it. The consortium is set up to make sure the American public has an electric car. It was not set up to fight the mandate. We are a battery company, and we’re not going to lie to the public!' Battery companies were bound by GM not to reveal to the public the advances in battery electric vehicle technology they had made.
Ovshinsky also remarked about the viability of his NiMH battery, 'The people who are saying that battery technology isn’t ready are absolutely wrong. It’s part of the party line. It’s self-perpetuating. It’s very sad. You tell a lie big enough and long enough, and people start to believe it. The fact of the matter is volume. That’s the only reason batteries are the cost that they are.'
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Also they want there cars and trucks to look like cars and trucks and not creations from MIT done on LSD. My feelings are much the same. Im a bit more lib when it comes to areo. But the fact remains. I to don't like the looks of ultra areo. My Civic push's right up to the limit for me at this current time. Doesn't mean that I cant warm up to it a bit more down the road.
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I'm with you on this. Ugly cars are a no go.
But the Dodge Intrepid ESX2(.19 Cd), GM Precept(.16 Cd), and Ford Prodigy(.20 Cd) look like normal cars. Subtle, almost imperceptible changes in the rear angles and front of a car can have a huge impact on drag, without significantly altering the car's overall style.
Here's pics of the three below:
Aside from the rear skirts, the ESX2 looks near identical to a regular Intrepid. The Precept looks at least as much like a normal car as a Prius, which is considered acceptable by the motoring public. The Ford Prodigy looks a lot like a normal Focus!
We can have ultra aero without sacrificing style. But, the auto industry probably won't do it. The 1921 Rumpler had a .27 Cd. It took nearly 80 years for the mainstream automakers to sell cars that would match or beat it, the Honda Insight(.25 Cd) and Toyota Prius(.26 Cd) being the two examples. why go to ultra aero designs when there is money to be made selling everything in between and advertising it as the best there is?
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