Electric cars, Good news bad news

Electric cars today are at a tipping point almost at the stage where manufactures are wondering if they should introduce a electric alternative or carry on, knowing full well that petrol prices are steadily rising. Battery technology and other costs for the entire lifespan of the electric car needs to be weighed against the petrol car. Also during these times its best to find out any news on the current state of electric cars. One or the fore runners of electric cars is tesla motor with good news.
In Hawthorne, Calif, Tesla Motors introduced its Supercharger, a glittering monolith capable of bringing the battery of a Model S sedan from flat to full in about an hour.
Elon Musk, chief executive of Tesla, made an introduction of the 480-volt Supercharger. Mr. Musk said the chargers would dispense free electricity generated without emissions through a partnership with SolarCity, a builder and installer of photovoltaic equipment led by Peter and Lyndon Rive, cousins of Mr. Musk. The Tesla executive is also SolarCity’s chairman.
The Supercharger will be installed at solar carports loosely resembling filling stations and are capable of charging several vehicles simultaneously, as well as returning surplus power to the grid. Khyati Shah, a spokeswoman for SolarCity, wrote in an e-mail that two of the six Superchargers already installed had solar capability, with the others running off of grid power. One solar unit is 24 kilowatts and the other is 26.

Mr. Musk said the Supercharger network would address some anxieties that might be inhibiting wide consumer adoption of electric vehicles, including concern about power-plant emissions related to charging; the cars’ inability to travel long distances; and operational costs. The Supercharger will charge at 100 kilowatts and eventually up to 120 kilowatts, he said. “What it means is that you can drive for three hours, stop for less than half an hour, recharge, and be ready to go again,” Mr. Musk said. A Model S would reach a state of half-charge in 30 minutes.

The system is not compatible with existing Level III fast chargers. It complements elements of the company’s charging system unveiled earlier, including the high-power wall unit and plug design the company demonstrated for Wheels last year.
Tesla has six Superchargers in operation, all in California, with more to come in the state by the end of the year. The first stations are expected to be opened to the public in coming weeks.
Mr. Musk said the company intended to have Superchargers installed across much of the United States in the next two years and to have the entire country, and the lower part of Canada, covered in four or five years.
The ability to connect to the Supercharger will be standard on Model S cars with the 85-kilowatt-hour battery, the highest-capacity battery marketed by Tesla, and would be optional for buyers of the sedan fitted with the 60-kilowatt-hour pack. That said, Model S sedans equipped with the 40-kilowatt-hour batteries, and the existing fleet of Tesla Roadsters, will be excluded from using the Supercharger.

Bad news Toyota, which had already taken a more conservative view of the market for battery-powered cars than rivals General Motors Co and Nissan Motor Co, said it would only sell about 100 battery-powered eQ vehicles in the United States and Japan in an extremely limited release.
By dropping plans for a second electric vehicle in its line-up, Toyota cast more doubt on an alternative to the combustion engine that has been both lauded for its oil-saving potential and criticized for its heavy reliance on government subsidies in key markets like the United States.

"The current capabilities of electric vehicles do not meet society's needs, whether it may be the distance the cars can run, or the costs, or how it takes a long time to charge," said, Takeshi Uchiyamada, who spearheaded Toyota's development of the Prius hybrid in the 1990s.
Toyota said it was putting its emphasis on that technology, an area in which it is the established leader. Toyota said on Monday it expected to have 21 hybrid gas-electric models like the Prius in its line-up by 2015. Of that total, 14 of the new hybrids will be all-new, the automaker said.

Pure electric vehicles, like the Nissan Leaf, carry only lithium-ion batteries. Consumer demand for the vehicles has been capped by their limited range and the relatively high cost of the powerful batteries they require. The decision to drop plans for more extensive rollout of its eQ city car leaves Toyota with just a single pure EV in its line-up. The automaker will launch an all-electric RAV4 model in the United States that was jointly developed with Tesla Motors. Toyota expects to sell 2,600 of the electric-powered sports utility vehicle over the next three years. By comparison, Toyota sold almost 37,000 Camry sedans in August alone in the United States, the automaker's largest market.
Toyota is also far from its plug-in hybrid sales target. The automaker planned to sell between 35,000 and 40,000 Prius plug-in hybrids in 2012 in Japan. So far it has sold only 8,400, or about 20 percent of its target.

A broad industry consensus sees plug-in cars accounting for only a single-digit percentage of total global sales over the next decade. Nissan remains more bullish, forecasting that by 2020 one-tenth of all cars sold will be electric. Globally, Nissan has sold about 38,000 Leaf electric cars since the vehicle's launch at the end of 2010.
While on the horizon, BMW's Megacity Vehicle is finally taking shape. The electric car well before its 2013 arrival. Until now, BMW's Project i has merely been vague talk about future mobility concepts and electric vehicles for major urban areas.
The Ford Focus electric, has a 6.6 kW battery on the vehicle which renews the depleted charge at almost double speeds as that of the 3.3 kW batteries. The 3.3 kW batteries are used on the Nissan Leaf and it takes seven hours to charge the vehicle, and is also expected sometime next near. Although its price tag is expected to be in the region of £25,000.
New Electric cars from next year will be adding to a changing market, I am unsure if the supercharger refueling infrastructure in the US, will be a universal connection to allow any other cars to charge. I am Hoping that car manufactures like BMW Nissan and Ford can find success in the electric car business,and one day will trickle down to the average consumer.

         

Good news bad news, The Fuel factor

Hard-pressed motorists are facing further pressure next week, with AA Ireland predicting the price of petrol and diesel is set to reach a new record high. According to the motoring organization, petrol will reach €1.70 per litre next week, with diesel reaching €1.60. The average price of petrol is currently €1.63, according to AA Ireland.

The bad news is according to industry sources have been saying that England is expecting a very significant price rise over the next week or two weeks, and we might see €1.70 per litre in the space of next week to 10 days for petrol, AA's Conor Faughnan told RTE Radio One's Marian Finucane Show. Almost 60 per cent of the retail price of petrol is taxes levied by the state, Mr Faughnan said. Other factors influencing fuel prices is the rising price in oil, and the strength of the euro against the dollar. The euro is currently about 16 per cent weaker against the dollar than it was a year ago.

petrol is heading for £1.50 a litre and a poor harvest will send food prices spiralling. Rising tensions in the Middle East, coupled with heavy transatlantic demand during the US’s holiday season, sent crude oil prices higher in recent weeks, despite some softening on Friday.
With road fuel accounting for nearly five per cent of the Consumer Prices Index, any rise on the current price of about £1.37 a litre could reverse the decline in inflation.
And with extreme weather disrupting agricultural production in Britain and abroad, higher prices at the pumps could be mirrored by more expensive food on supermarket shelves.
The Petrol Retailers’ Association, representing independent forecourts, said wholesale prices had risen by about ten per cent ‘while Britain has been absorbed by two weeks of Olympic excitement.

Meanwhile In a surprising turnaround, the amount of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere in the U.S. has fallen dramatically to its lowest level in 20 years, and government officials say the biggest reason is that cheap and plentiful natural gas has led many power plant operators to switch from dirtier-burning coal.

Many of the world's leading climate scientists didn't see the drop coming, in large part because it happened as a result of market forces rather than direct government action against carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere. Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University, said the shift away from coal is reason for "cautious optimism" about potential ways to deal with climate change. He said it demonstrates that "ultimately people follow their wallets" on global warming.

The alternative doesn't seem any better as of average an electric car costs around £25,000, they have a rough top speed of 90 mph and a standard charge time of 6 to 8 hours. And with the li-ion battery lasting for 300 to 500 charge cycles roughly 3 years. Nissan GB’s senior vice-president, mentions that the Nissan leaf lithium ion battery is made of 48 modules and that each would cost £404 to replace making a cost of £19,392 for the entire battery pack. Though most owners wont need a new battery for at least 10 years if they are going on short journeys. Battery prices hasn't gone down yet so the alternative to petrol isn't as attractive just yet. Though Korean scientist have developed a fast-charge lithium-ion battery that can be recharged 30 to 120 times faster than conventional li-ion batteries. The team believes it can build a battery pack for electric vehicles that can be fully charged in less than a minute.

One of the main issues with rechargeable batteries is that they take longer to recharge as their physical volume grows. When you recharge a battery, it charges from the outside in — so the fatter the battery, the longer it takes. You can somewhat avoid this by breaking larger batteries into smaller individual cells, but that technique only gets you so far.
The Korean method takes the cathode material — standard lithium manganese oxide (LMO) in this case — and soaks it in a solution containing graphite. Then, by carbonizing the graphite-soaked LMO, the graphite turns into a dense network of conductive traces that run throughout the cathode just like a sponge. This new cathode is then packaged normally, with an electrolyte and graphite anode, to create the fast-charging li-ion battery. Other factors, such as the battery’s energy density and cycle life seem to remain unchanged. These networks of carbonized graphite effectively act like blood vessels, allowing every part of the battery to recharge at the same time — thus speeding up recharge by 30 to 120 times.

The current situation of everyone using fossil fuels, have made it too difficult for most house holds to make ends meet. The good news is that this trend may improve the environment, however it hasn't solved the fuel crisis. The expensive switch over to electric vehicles will probably help the economy as the demand for oil will come down. Perhaps spark a gold rush in lithium or battery companies, hopefully that will bring the prices down. At this point in time it is slightly cheaper to use petrol, but if predictions of the rising fuel brings up the prices. It will be a matter of time when fuel related crime will escalate, and protests will continue on fuel duty.
But with food prices rising sharply in early 2011, many experts began to call on countries to scale back their headlong rush into green fuel development, arguing that the combination of ambitious biofuel targets and mediocre harvests of some crucial crops is contributing to high prices, hunger and political instability. The future seems to look bleak as the old paradigm of supply and demand will change in the coming years. But I remain hopeful when the majority of people will turn to electric, and eventually shipping and transit companies will look for bio fuels to escape the fuel crisis.

Electric cars, an expensive alternative to fossil fuel

In the good old days in England when fuel less then a pound around 2008 the supermarkets had a price war on fuel the cost was 89 per liter of fuel. This year, the cost had peaked up to £1.42 because of the potential Fuel tanker shrike that didn't happen. In the start of June prices shrink down £1.33, but because of the embargo in Iran and the situation of the Eurozone. World news effects prices and it filters down to the consumer.

People struggle every week on the cost of living and in some ways are effected by the rise in fuel prices , which raises the cost of transport of food and other consumer good in the markets.

Which I guess why Tesla (a electric car company ) are making a bold prediction that  in 20 years time  new cars will be fully electric. Chief Executive Elon Musk, an entrepreneur known for his outsized ambition. Last friday made a forecast battery powered cars will likely match the internal combustion engine.

Musk, co Founder the startup of Pay-pal, divides his time between Tesla and his space exploration startup Space X.
Electric cars were popular in the 19th century  and early 20th century, until early advances of the internal combustion engine technology. With mass production and cheap gasoline vehicles led the decline of electric cars. But energy crisis of the 70s and 80s brought a short lived interest in electric cars. This grew further in mid 2000s a renewed enthusiasm, due to rapidly increasing oil prices and to reduce green house gas emissions.
Companies including Tesla Roadster, Mitsubishi i MiEV, Nissan Leaf, Renault Fluence Z.E. Ford Focus Electric, BMW ActiveE, not to mention a few more are available. The nissan leaf sold 27,000 units worldwide by early April 2012. The Mitsubishi i MiEV sold 17,000 units through october 2011.

The electric car has several benefits, compared with internal combustion cars. They have a slight reduction on air pollution, they do not emit harmful pollutants. They reduce greenhouse gases, depending on the technology charging the batteries, finally they do not relay on oil.
Despite the advantages, widespread adoption of electric cars faces several hurdles and limitations. Electric cars are significantly more expensive then conventional internal combustion engine and hybrid electric vehicles in 2011. This is because of the cost of Lithium ion battery packs, however prices seem to be dropping. Other factors such as the recharging infrastructure, or limited number of electric car showrooms may contribute to the reluctance of a electric changeover. Several government have established policies and economical incentives to promote the sales of electric cars. They are to fund further development of electric vehicles and more cost effective battery components. The US pledged $2.4 billion in federal grants, while China will provide US$15 billion to initiate an electric car industry within its borders.

Lithium ion battery technology seems to provide high energy density is relatively low in weight but is durable for 400 to 1200 cycles. Normally situated in handheld electronics, they are widely available, suffer no memory effect. In the way of losing  its recharge effectiveness despite not fully discharging the battery.
They also have the disadvantage of a limited charge cycle and efficiency might drop in high temperatures.
They also need a battery power management system  to prevent operation out side the safety limits. In extreme cases Lithium ion batteries can rupture or explode when exposed to high temperature.

There have be talk about alternative options to lithium ion, molten salt batteries with an operating temperature of 400 to 700 degrees C are a promising technology. They have problems of thermal management but recent  battery such as the ZEBRA battery operate 245 degree C, with a higher charge cycle of 3000.

Zinc bromie is a hybrid  electrochemical battery, they have a high energy density relative to lead acid batteries, have a high charge cycle life of 2000 no shelf life limitations like lithium ion.

What ever the future claims on transportation, there is a certainty of a countdown to the end of crude oil and fossil fuels. Technology has given us a faster electric car in the form of a tesla roadster clocking at 102 miles an hour for quarter of a mile, can travel around about 200 miles on one charge. It seems impressive that that electric car technology can complete with the combustion engine. Though at £86,950 I am thinking technology is not quite there. I do hope that battery technology becomes safer and cheaper then the current lithium ion standard, which seems to be the key thing for it to be a success. Until then I will carry on with my fossil fuel driven car and hope that I don't ruin the planet too much.