We should be doing all we can and
whatever is necessary, for our children’s
children to live. If this should require us
to give up driving our CO2 - producing
automobiles, using instead electric trains,
trolley buses, and bicycles, we must do
that, and the sooner the better. Of course,
there will be many other changes.
Energy consumption must decline until it
is produced cleanly. There must be a
concerted effort on all fronts.
The necessary changes in our
transportation system may be the most
disruptive because we have become so
dependent upon the automobile. Cars are
getting better all the time, gradually, but
now they must get much better, quickly.
They must not pollute or produce CO2.
Automobiles account for perhaps 50
percent of our pollution of the
atmosphere and 100 percent of our
worrying (and unsustainable) negative
balance of trade. They must not use oil
or its derivatives. They must be energy
efficient. They must be as commodious
as a minivan or an SUV, they must have
excellent acceleration, and they must not
cost more than the cars we have now.
Surprisingly, the only vehicle that meets these
requirements is the battery-electric vehicle or BEV.
Nothing approaches it in simplicity, durability,
efficiency and cost of manufacture, and it can be fast.
In the early days of the automobile, there were more
electrics than gasoline cars. Electric energy is convenient
and cheap but difficult to store. The EV part of the BEV was
fine but the B wasn’t. It was efficient but its storing
capacity was less than one percent that of a fuel tank.
It was expensive, needed careful attention and had a short life.
[Read full Article]
The electric car seems destined to be the car of the future and to derive
electric energy from the grid in a two-way exchange known as V2G (vehicle-to-grid).
Ideally, the battery in every parked electric will contribute to a vast energy storage
system available to tide the grid over periods of peak demand.
Proponents claim this is
economically sound and can substantially reduce battery cost to the motorist. But will the
motorist conscientiously plug his car in whenever he parks, even if he knows his battery
does not need topping up, even if he is in a hurry (as almost everybody is), if it is raining,
if he is disabled, or if his mind is on other matters? No, he won’t. He may even forget to
plug in when the car is in the home garage or carport. Of course someone will come up with a
way of making the connection to the grid automatically... [Read full Article]
The recent episode on a California freeway in which James Sikes was told how to stop his runaway Toyota Prius by a highway patrol officer, driving alongside at over 90 miles per hour, has aroused public anxiety about the safety of the Prius and other Toyota hybrid cars. Interestingly, Steve Wozniak (Apple’s co-developer with Steve Jobs) was able to induce an acceleration malfunction in his own Prius. In Wozniak’s car, the brakes responded and he does not consider the malfunction dangerous but he acknowledged the potential fallibility of a computer system. By this, he seemed to infer a vulnerability not seen in the brakes of non-electric cars. This could relate to blending of regenerative and friction braking functions because only electric-drive cars employ regenerative braking. Furthermore, Professor David W. Gilbert in his testimony before Congress criticized the Toyota fail-safe system because of its inability to detect certain types of malfunction of the accelerator position sensor and electronic control module, a basic design shortcoming. [Read full Article]