RIDEK A Much Better Car

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]

Vehicle-to-Grid


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]

Articles

Prius Problems . . .

    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]