Tesla - A True Lotus?

[elansprint71]

I thought that the Elise was a Proton.

[GrUmPyBoDgEr]

I thought that the Elise was a Proton.

That statement should present a strong line of demarcation between us & the rest of the Lotus community

Cheers
Anon.

[elansprint71]

... and the Excel was a Toyota and the Elan M100 S2 was a Bugatti.

[twincamman]

and if Granny had wheels --she would be a truck - --ed

[sparkey]

If it is the noise of the car that really floats your boat, I think you could fit a powerful amplifier and set it to whatever engine configuration you like! I seem to remember some manufacturer in the 70s and 80s experimenting with anti-noise and speakers to do just this.. The sound was only experienced in the cab and could be shifted from a 4 to 6 to V8 at the touch of a button! As the set up modified the existing exhaust note, it was linked to your actual engine speed and reviewers described it as remarkably realistic. A 1000watt amplifier can produce a hell of a lot of noise, and probably wouldn't make much of an impact on the power demand of a Tesla....

I have no idea what the comparative noise of an amplifier/speakers vs car exhaust would be, but the chavs who drive up and down our street with their boom boxes at max seem to drown out their exhaust noises!

Jeremy

That's like playing "guitar hero" on Nintendo Wii. It's a bit of fun for a few minutes but it doesn't mean you can play a guitar. It's got no soul. The joy of the wail of a good engine is in the knowledge that all those little noises that make up the big noise are little things banging, whizzing and crashing toether to make the car move. A fancy amp will never give that feeling.

S..

[twincamman]

wellll many years ago when commuting from Newmarket to Toronto daily -[60 miles]-if I was late I had a cassette tape I made in my vee doing a lap at Mosport I would plug it and turn up the volume ----my times from door to door dropped dramatically ed

[elansprint71]

Wish you folks could have heard what Peter Stevens postulated about the Tesla route to ???? at Bentley Motors the other night.

[1964 S1]

Greetings elansprint, huh ? Eric

[msd1107]

Interesting comments re electric vehicles. However, it requires a multi-disciplinarian approach to properly evaluate the purported worth of this technology.

A SI IC engine can achieve 40% thermal efficiency, and has done so for more than 50 years. A CI IC engine can achieve 50% thermal efficiency, and has done so for more than 70 years. Conversely, a carbon based electric generating plant struggles to get to 40%.

The thermal efficiency of an IC engine is lower at the low load factors seen in normal vehicle operation. It is an engineering task to increase this average efficiency. Progress has been made, more progress is needed. An electric generating plant suffers up to or more than 10% losses in distributing power from generation to consumption, and has limited ability to improve its efficiency

The IC engine is a highly regulated source of pollution generation, often the emissions are less than the ambient level. Electric plants are more loosely regulated, generating excessive levels of CO2, visual haze, particulates, and heavy metals pollution.

The electric grid is capacity limited at times. The electric industry is converting from older generation of highly polluting technology (coal, nuclear) to newer lower polluting technology (solar, wind, others). However, all lower polluting electric energy is fully committed for the foreseeable future. Thus we may safely assume that any energy used for electric vehicles is derived from the most highly polluting sources. If the energy is not needed, it does not need to be generated, and the pollution is not generated.

Note here the costs to society of mining coal for electricity which include mountain top removal, stream pollution, heavy metal deposition downstrean from the generating plant that poisons the earth for 1000s of KMs, etc. The cost for sequestering spent nuclear fuel is projected to exceed the cost of the national debt, making nuclear by far the most expensive electric technology.

The xPrise committee, which is a competition for a 100mpge vehicle, has already simulated the pollution of various technologies. PHEVs and EVs generate more CO2 pollution than other technologies, like HEVs.

An IC engined vehicle regularly has a range on one tank of fuel of more than 500km. An EV (PHEV) gets between 40 and 120km (ignoring publicity figures). This is laughable. It is not currently commercially feasible to produce an EV with a 500km range.

And this is not even considering the cost or environmental consequences of the batteries in EV or PHEV vehicles.

An IC vehicle pays substantial fuel taxes to pay for the infrastructure costs of the roads on which it runs. A vehicle running off of electricity from the mains does not pay this tax. Thus all of society is subsidizing the infrastructure costs of the EV until new legislation is passed passing the proper costs onto the EV.

The conclusion is that an EV generates more pollution, evades their proper costs of running on the road, and passes environmental costs onto unsuspecting citizens.

Historically, the energy density of batteries has improved at a slower rate than the efficiency of IC engines. While research should not stop on chemical energy storage devices, realize the prospect for dramatic improvements over IC improvements are not encouraging.

In conclusion, EV vehicles are more highly polluting and higher cost vehicles than IC vehicles.

David
1968 36/7988

PS: I have been following electric vehicle technology for more than 50 years now, and its 100 year history. My girl friend has owned a Prius for more than 5 years, and I have driven it extensively, achieving, at times, 60 mpg in both city and highway driving.

[paddy]

A very interesting analysis, with a lot of comparisons to the bogus (and now largely discredited) thinking that led governments to think that biofuel was the answer to everything.

However, in the interests of balance, you should also mention the possibility for improvements in efficiency from kinetic energy recovery - which changes the equation a bit.

Paddy

[msd1107]

Paddy,

Very good point.

The Prius (as an example) is a form of KERS utilizing chemical energy storage (batteries).

F1 this year allows KERS. There are at least three major technologies available.

One is rotational energy storage (flywheels). At least two firms can supply such systems to F1 teams.

Another is electrical storage, utilizing ultra-capacitors.

A third is chemical storage, our familiar battery. There is wide ranging research and development going on improving the energy density of batteries, their discharge and recharge rate and duty cycle, their discharge depth, and their life cycle.

Outside of F1 or racing, the environmental consequences of each technology needs to be considered.

One interesting aspect is that it is possible to simulate the energy recovery capabilities of any technology. Basically, any KERS adds weight, which uses additional energy during steady state. Only if there is variable speed usage can energy be recovered and re-introduced, decreasing overall energy usage. So KERS can only provide a net savings in energy consumption if there is variable speed usage (so it is not suitable for long steady speed scenarios). In addition, there is a maximum amount of energy that can be captured, stored, and re-introduced. Providing more energy storage than this maximum amount leads to increased energy consumption in all modes of useage.

Plug-in hybrids that seek to use energy from the grid will use more energy overall compared to a non-plug-in due to the increased weight of the additional energy storage.

In addition, a conventional IC engine has its pollution controlled at the point of usage, where the cost is born by the consumer. If energy is extracted from the grid, the pollution is exported from the point of usage (where the vehicle is operating) to the point of generation (where the population has no control over the pollution generated, but suffers its effects). Thus I, in California, running my plug-in, generate pollution on the east coast where the coal is mined, up the east coast and across Greenland and across the Arctic to the Scandinavian nations where heavy metal pollution is degrading the environment.

Not very ethical behavior on my part. Or for anybody, for that matter.

David
1968 36/7988

[yandy]

To briefly return to the original question, I think it's just been definitively answered by the latest edition of BBC's Top Gear who tested two Teslas: they were enormously fun to drive, overpriced, and both broke down.

And then to neatly segue back into the very interesting direction this topic has taken, the same programme had a play with Honda's hydrogen fuel cell equipped car. Any of you boffins know how that technology figures in the above debate?

[msd1107]

yandy,

Hydrogen is a well proved fuel, dating from the '30s. Liquid hydrogen/oxygen was used a propellant from the '40s. Hydrogen was proposed as the fuel for a Mach 3+ 100,000 ft altitude plane by Lockheed (the CL-400) in the '50s (a precursor to the eventual A-12 and SR-71 Mach 3+ series planes).

The advantage of hydrogen as a fuel is that its combustion product is water, leading to extremely low levels of emissions. The appropriate engine design can accommodate liquid/compressed hydrogen and gas as well as conventional fuels. Both Honda and BMW (and others) have hydrogen demonstration programs.

However.

Hydrogen is very light, and needs to be compressed to high pressures or liguified to be usable. This has substantial engineering, usage, and infrastructure implications.

Hydrogen does not occur in high concentrations naturally. The energy costs in separating, sequestering (compressing or liquifing) and distributing hydrogen exceed the energy recovered. This is similar to the energy balance in the corn to methanol model, and the PHEV or EV model.

There is substantial research ongoing to alleviate these problem areas, many of which are very intreresting. Being research, the short term prospects are not too promising.

Liquid hydrocarbon fuel is a very efficient form of energy storage. The technology for extraction, refinement, distribution, and controlling emissions has over a century of of development and refinement.

But there is plenty of room for research, new technologies, and good old fashioned arguments over the details of some of these technologies. That is why so many alternatives are being presented.

David
1968 36/7988

[elansprint71]

Interesting comments re electric vehicles. However, it requires a multi-disciplinarian approach to properly evaluate the purported worth of this technology.

A SI IC engine can achieve 40% thermal efficiency, and has done so for more than 50 years. A CI IC engine can achieve 50% thermal efficiency, and has done so for more than 70 years. Conversely, a carbon based electric generating plant struggles to get to 40%.

The thermal efficiency of an IC engine is lower at the low load factors seen in normal vehicle operation. It is an engineering task to increase this average efficiency. Progress has been made, more progress is needed. An electric generating plant suffers up to or more than 10% losses in distributing power from generation to consumption, and has limited ability to improve its efficiency

The IC engine is a highly regulated source of pollution generation, often the emissions are less than the ambient level. Electric plants are more loosely regulated, generating excessive levels of CO2, visual haze, particulates, and heavy metals pollution.

The electric grid is capacity limited at times. The electric industry is converting from older generation of highly polluting technology (coal, nuclear) to newer lower polluting technology (solar, wind, others). However, all lower polluting electric energy is fully committed for the foreseeable future. Thus we may safely assume that any energy used for electric vehicles is derived from the most highly polluting sources. If the energy is not needed, it does not need to be generated, and the pollution is not generated.

Note here the costs to society of mining coal for electricity which include mountain top removal, stream pollution, heavy metal deposition downstrean from the generating plant that poisons the earth for 1000s of KMs, etc. The cost for sequestering spent nuclear fuel is projected to exceed the cost of the national debt, making nuclear by far the most expensive electric technology.

The xPrise committee, which is a competition for a 100mpge vehicle, has already simulated the pollution of various technologies. PHEVs and EVs generate more CO2 pollution than other technologies, like HEVs.

An IC engined vehicle regularly has a range on one tank of fuel of more than 500km. An EV (PHEV) gets between 40 and 120km (ignoring publicity figures). This is laughable. It is not currently commercially feasible to produce an EV with a 500km range.

And this is not even considering the cost or environmental consequences of the batteries in EV or PHEV vehicles.

An IC vehicle pays substantial fuel taxes to pay for the infrastructure costs of the roads on which it runs. A vehicle running off of electricity from the mains does not pay this tax. Thus all of society is subsidizing the infrastructure costs of the EV until new legislation is passed passing the proper costs onto the EV.

The conclusion is that an EV generates more pollution, evades their proper costs of running on the road, and passes environmental costs onto unsuspecting citizens.

Historically, the energy density of batteries has improved at a slower rate than the efficiency of IC engines. While research should not stop on chemical energy storage devices, realize the prospect for dramatic improvements over IC improvements are not encouraging.

In conclusion, EV vehicles are more highly polluting and higher cost vehicles than IC vehicles.

David
1968 36/7988

PS: I have been following electric vehicle technology for more than 50 years now, and its 100 year history. My girl friend has owned a Prius for more than 5 years, and I have driven it extensively, achieving, at times, 60 mpg in both city and highway driving.

OK, you are Keith Frank, I claim my $20.

[leedsj]

Ah - here we go boys. The Lotus Hybrid EV concept:
http://www.channel4.com/4car/news/news- ... tus-ev_a11