Google Pushes 100mpg Car

[tinrobot]

Google said Tuesday it is getting in on the development of electric vehicles, awarding $1 million in grants and inviting applicants to bid for another $10 million in funding to develop plug-in hybrid electric vehicles capable of getting 70 to 100 miles per gallon.

The project, called the RechargeIT initiative and run from Google's philanthropic arm, Google.org, aims to further the development of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles - cars or trucks that have both a gasoline engine and advanced batteries that recharge by plugging into the nation's electric grid.

"Since most Americans drive less than 35 miles per day, you easily could drive mostly on electricity with the gas tank as a safety net," Dan Reicher, director of Climate and Energy Initiatives for Google.org, wrote on the organization's Web site. "In preliminary results from our test fleet, on average the plug-in hybrid gas mileage was 30-plus mpg higher than that of the regular hybrids."

The project also aims to develop vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology, allowing cars to sell their stored power back to the nation's electricity grid during times of peak demand.

http://money.cnn.com/2007/06/19/news/economy/google_plugin/index.htm?eref=rss_topstories

[whistle]

1. "plug-in hybrid electric vehicles capable of getting 70 to 100 miles per gallon"

...So they don't like the Toyota Prius which gets 40 to 50 mpg without ever being plugged in? Plugging in will require hugh increases in electrical production which will add to CO2 in the atmosphere.

[thoughtanarchist]

2. "Hugh" amounts of electricity can be generated from wind and solar.

:evilgrin:

[whistle]

3. Not enough to power 200 million passenger cars, only something like

....4th generation thorium high temperature gas-cooled nuclear reactors around the country could accomplish that.

[thoughtanarchist]

5. That sounds like speculation. Cars use less energy than homes.

"According to the American Solar Energy Society, enough sunlight falls on the earth's surface each minute to meet world energy demand for an entire year."

http://www.getenergyaware.org/classroom-fun-facts.asp

[whistle]

21. Typical electric cars (BEVs) on the road have 85 to 100 mile range per 8 hour charge

....using 24 batteries.

<snip>
A battery electric vehicle (BEV) is an electric vehicle that utilizes chemical energy stored in rechargeable battery packs. Electric vehicles use electric motors and motor controllers instead of internal combustion engines (ICEs). Vehicles using both electric motors and ICEs are examples of hybrid vehicles, and are not considered pure BEVs because they operate in a charge-sustaining mode. Hybrid vehicles with batteries that can be charged externally to displace some or all of their ICE power and gasoline fuel are called plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV), and are pure BEVs during their charge-depleting mode. BEVs are usually automobiles, light trucks, neighborhood electric vehicles, motorcycles, motorized bicycles, electric scooters, golf carts, forklifts and similar vehicles, because batteries are less appropriate for larger long-range applications.

BEVs were among the earliest automobiles, and are more energy-efficient than internal combustion, fuel cell, and most other types of vehicles. BEVs produce no exhaust fumes, and minimal pollution if charged from most forms of renewable energy. Many are capable of acceleration exceeding that of conventional vehicles, are quiet, and do not produce noxious fumes. BEVs reduce dependence on petroleum, thus enhancing national security, and mitigate global warming by alleviating the greenhouse effect.

Historically, BEVs and PHEVs have had issues with high battery costs, limited travel distance between battery recharging, charging time, and battery lifespan, which have limited widespread adoption. Ongoing battery technology advancements have addressed many of these problems; many models have recently been prototyped, and a handful of future production models have been announced. Toyota, Honda, Ford and General Motors all produced BEVs in the 90s in order to comply with the California Air Resources Board's Zero Emission Vehicle Mandate, which was later defeated by the manufacturers and the federal government. The major US automobile manufacturers have been accused of deliberately sabotaging their electric vehicle production efforts.<1><2>

<link> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_electric_vehicle

GM killed their EV1 program dead!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1


There have been improvments

<snip>
The Tesla Roadster is a fully electric sports car, and is the first car to be produced by electric car firm Tesla Motors. Tesla claims prototypes have been able to accelerate from 0-60 mph (100 km/h) in about 4 seconds, and reach a top speed of over 130 mph (210 km/h). Additionally, the car will be able to travel more than 200 miles (322 km) on a single charge of its lithium-ion battery system. The Roadster's efficiency is reported as 133 Wh/km<2> or equivalent to 135 mpg (1.74 l/100 km).<3><4><5> For details, see the Fuel efficiency section.

Contents
1 History
1.1 Unveiling
1.2 2007 Autoshow season
1.3 2007 Academy Awards
2 Development
3 Production
4 Sales
4.1 Pricing
4.2 Service
5 Specifications
5.1 Motor
5.2 Transmission
5.3 Performance
5.4 Battery System
5.5 Fuel efficiency
6 Notable ownership
7 References
8 See also
9 External links

<Deep snip>
Fuel efficiency
For more details from the manufacturer, see their white papers and presentation

On the EPA highway cycle, the Roadster's efficiency is "135 mpg equivalent, per the conversion rate used by the EPA"<2> which converts to 133 Wh/km (4.66 mi/kWh) battery-to-wheel or 155 Wh/km (4.00 mi/kWh) station-to-wheel.

Tesla also reported the battery-to-wheel efficiency as 110 Wh/km (5.65 mi/kWh) on an unspecified driving cycle (either a constant 60 mph (96 km/h) or SAE J1634 test<21>) and states a charging efficiency of 86%. This results in an overall station-to-wheel efficiency of 128 Wh/km (4.85 mi/kWh).<22>

The Roadster's motor efficiency is 90% on average and 80% at peak power.<23> For comparison, an internal combustion engine produces 6000 to 9000 Wh of output energy from each gallon of gasoline input. The state of tune and seasonal variations in gasoline formulation account for the output range.

Because the Roadster does not actually use gasoline, equivalent petroleum fuel efficiency (mpg, l/100 km) can be calculated in several ways:

A number comparable to the typical Monroney stickers' "station-to-wheel" fuel efficiency can be calculated based on the DOE's energy content for a U.S. gallon of gasoline of 33705 Wh/gal:<24>

For CAFE regulatory purposes, the DOE's full petroleum-equivalency equation<24> combines primary energy efficiencies for the USA electric grid and the crude oil to gas station path with a "fuel content factor" to quantify conservation and scarcity of fuels in the USA. This combination yields a factor of 82,049 Wh/gal in the above equation and a regulatory fuel efficiency of 329 mpg (0.72 l/100 km).

To compare the full-cycle energy-equivalency of gasoline with electricity from the USA grid, the factor of 12,307 Wh/gal<24> removes the "fuel content factor" = 1/0.15 and the above equation yields an equivalent efficiency of 49 mpg (4.77 l/100 km). For full-cycle comparisons, the "station-to-wheel" sticker value from a gasoline-fueled vehicle must be multiplied by the "well-to-station" efficiency; the DOE regulation specifies a "well-to-station" efficiency of 0.83 for gasoline.<24> The average American car's 28 mpg, for example, converts to a full-cycle energy-equivalent of 23.2 mpg.

To compare the full-cycle energy-equivalency of gasoline with electricity generated by newer, 58% efficiency CCGT power plants,<25> the factor of 21,763 Wh/gal<24> in the above equation yields a fuel efficiency of 87 mpg (2.70 l/100 km).

When recharged using non-fossil fuel electricity sources such as hydroelectric, solar power, wind or nuclear, the equivalent efficiency can be remarkably higher as fossil fuel is not used in refueling.

Monetary cost offers another way to find an equivalent fuel efficiency. Tesla Motors reports an energy cost of approximately $0.01/mile using PG&E's E-9 night-time incentive charging, or about $0.03/mile using the retail price of $0.12/kWh. Comparison with a gasoline price of $3.00/gallon, for instance, results in an equivalent of 300 mpg (0.78 l/100 km) using E-9 or 100 mpg (2.35 l/100 km) using retail pricing. For more cost comparison details, please refer to the battery electric vehicle article.
<MORE>

<link> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Roadster

[thoughtanarchist]

31. ...and according to the interview I heard on NPR (Tom Ashbrook)

They (GM) plan on fast-tracking the Chevy Volt for general availability by 2010.

:bounce:

[GreenPartyVoter]

9. If each home had its own P/V and wind charging station wherever feasible that

cuts down on the draw from the the grid in a big way.

[whistle]

22. It could, but such generating systems require hefty investments of $10k to $30k

...up front costs, plus significant operating and maintenance costs and are prone to high wind and element damage like hail, freezing rains ice storms tornadoes, hurricanes earthquakes, floods, etc. For many commuters and home owners and renters, we don't maintain large gasoline storage tanks on our property and buy bulk, I think most consumers of future electric vehicles would resist infrastructure investments like that for self sufficiency home electrical generating systems unless such systems could be substantially reduced in size, cost and complexity.

A brief cased sized nuclear fusion generator which could be designed to be safe and secure and maintenance free, would be a lot more practical and more likely embraced by future consumers than the idea of solar panels or wind generators.

[GreenPartyVoter]

30. But with the transporters we won't really need the cars.

Do the P/V wind until micro-fusion is available and affordable itself.

[whopis01]

33. Even if it isn't produced by renewable sources

Being produced by conventional electricity generation would put far less pollutants into the atmosphere than burning more gas in ICEs would.

[youngdem]

7. But we waste hugh amounts every night, when these cars could be charging

and they could even put some back into the grid during the day in certain situations.

Electricity doesn't have to be dirty, anyway.

I think electric cars combined with renewable ways to get electricity are the way we will move forward. Plug in cars are essential in that process, and these cars for many drivers may NEVER really run the gas motor.

[greenman3610]

10. NO NO NO NO NO

"electric cars will force us to build more electric plants"

this is a MYTH!
the department of Energy has studied this problem and determined that
enough wasted capacity exists in the system to power almost all the
vehicles in America if we switched completely to electric.

The key is that most drivers will plug in at night, during
"off peak" periods. That means they will tap into the
currently wasted 'spinning reserve", that utilities must
keep going during off times, because huge coal
plants can not be turned on and off daily.

That means, by replacing petroleum with currently
wasted capacity, we attack CO2 in both the transport and
the power gen sector.
As the electric grid is made more intelligent, we can
take advantage of V2G, or 'vehicle to grid" power,
and use the stored energy in vehicles to balance loads,
shave the need for peaking capacity, lower electric bills,
end blackouts and brownouts, and actually pay
car owners thousands of dollars per year
for load balancing services to utilities!

PLEASE follow up this link:
http://www.greencarcongress.com/v2g/index.html

[tinrobot]

11. It's much easier to reduce/control carbon at a powerplant.

You can use clean power such as wind/solar/whatever. Or, if you must burn carbon based fuels, you can capture and sequester the carbon before it hits the atmosphere, a task that's impractical with a gasoline/diesel engine in a car.

[TheWraith]

17. Uh, the Prius produces CO2 as well. Electrical generation doesn't have to.

Nuclear, wind, hydro, etcetera all produce zero CO2. The Prius ALWAYS produces CO2.

[ET Awful]

4. Am I the only one that saw "Pushes 100mpg Car" and thought . . .

No wonder it gets 100mpg . . . somebody's pushing the damn thing :P

[thoughtanarchist]

6. I'll bet it's fast, too...

That is, with Google pushing!

:party:

[NNadir]

8. It's easy to get 100 mpg if you push the car.

It's also easy to get that if you pull the car. People can do this, of course, but in the old days people used mules for this sort of thing.

Oxen work too.

I believe oxcarts got a brazillion miles per gallon.

[Greyskye]

13. dude

I believe oxcarts got a brazillion miles per gallon.

Yeah, we all get it that you think the Guvernator and the whole 'Million Solar Roofs' initiative is 'silly'.

But your over-use of this stupid joke (you repeat this at least one to six times a day!) borders on the pathetic. Why don't you come up with some new material? :eyes:

[NNadir]

14. Dude...

Has it occurred to you that I am merely repeating myself in response to repetition?

Repetition that is not repetitively addressed has a way of making it into urban mythology. If I people had stopped repeating certain things back in say, 1975, we wouldn't be in this mess.

If you wonder how Governor Hydrogen Hummer got reelected - and that is a wonder - part of the reason is that people continually repeated the silliness about the brazillion solar roofs, day after day after day after day.

When I stop hearing about how solar energy will save the day, I'll stop repeating myself. Got it, dude?

[Greyskye]

15. patronize much?

1) I won't bother to point out the mangled sentence up above. I can parse what you intended to say.

2) So you're 'catapulting the propaganda', as shrub would say? Repeating the same stupid thing over and over again in the hopes of influencing the sheeple? Gee, you have such a high opinion of people on this site. :eyes:

3) Do you patronize people as much in 'real life' as you do here? I only ask as patronizing and snide remarks (along with various uses of the pseudo-word 'brazillion') seem to comprise pretty much your entire debate arsenal.

I'm just curious here. What exactly is your connection to the nuclear power industry? You must have one, as there isn't much in the way of 'home nuclear hobbyists' out there.

[phantom power]

35. Actually, he's also good at using math and physics in debate too.

For example:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=100498&mesg_id=100723

But, when people respond to an explaination of equilibria with the rhetorical equivalent of "Your differential equations are nothing but psueudoscience and magical thinking, and by the way 2+2=5," well you can see how that might lead a person to say "fuck it, why not indulge in some gratuitous sarcasm?"

If I understand NNadir's life story (or, as much of it as he's published on the web), "home nuclear hobbyist" is actually the correct description. Believe it or not.

[whistle]

24. Oxen, horses, mules need hay and lots of it, they also shit most of the roughage

...out onto the streets. Growing up in the early 1940s milk wagons were still horse drawn, there were ice carts and even street cars drawn by horses. I remember street cleaners were employed with trash can carts a broom and a shovel going down the main street day and night cleaning up the fresh animal turds. I believe that in my town there was still one fire engine station with a horse team that pulled the pumping and hose cart. Those were quieter times.

Today in Orlando as a tourist attraction we have the horse carriages, but the driver is responsible for catching the turds and cleaning up any that miss the bag.

[melnjones]

36. I grew up in amish country.

Dodging horse poo with our vehicles is always a must:-)

[razzleberry]

12. 100 million cars, no problem ...

US capacity, one million megawatts.

suppose a car goes 40 miles, 2 miles per kilowatt-hour.
charged over 8 hours, at night.
2.5 kilowatts ...

times 100 million ... 250 thousand megawatts

do the math

[TheWraith]

19. Your math is faulty.

You're talking about watts, where you should be talking watt-hours. Figure an electric vehicle as requiring 215 watt-hours per mile (estimated efficiency for the Tesla Roadster), times 35 miles per day average person's use. That's 7.5 kilowatt-hours to fully recharge the car. Times 100 million vehicles, that's 750,000 megawatt hours, or roughly 9% of the US generating capacity over an 8 hour stretch.

[Greyskye]

20. Question...

Do you have any figures on what the average nighttime watt/hour usage is? I wasn't able to find them. :blush: I imagine that it varies quite a bit by region, which could make it more challenging. As referenced in a few different posts up-thread - we don't use all of the watt/hours available during the night, and the grid 'loses' what isn't used. Oh, and your figures are worst case - all the cars wouldn't require themselves to be fully charged every night.

So 750,000 Mwh. We're talking the majority of the e-vehicle 'charge time' will be the local night, correct? Wouldn't simply the fact that the majority of the charge time optimally utilizes our excess capacity, be a good thing? :)

Cheers!
(ahh, I'd love to have a Tesla Roadster!)

[TheWraith]

27. I heard one source which suggested that 40% of our capacity is unused at night.

I'm not sure how accurate that is. If so, that would be about 400,000 megawatts, times maybe six hours. Probably somewhat less than that, since some plants can be idled. I'd say that 1,200,000 megawatt-hours would be a fairly conservative estimate, if the basic premise is sound. And yes,it would be a very good thing to soak up that excess capacity. :)

It's true that all the vehicles wouldn't have to be fully recharged every night, but at the same time, some of them would need significantly more than 7.5 kWh, like big trucks or long commuters. I figure it evens out.

I too am in love with the Tesla Roadster. Cool fact: it's rated at 215 watt-hours per mile, according to the manufacturer. A gallon of gas contains roughly 35 kilowatt-hours of energy. At the average US efficiency of 23 MPG, that's 1500 watts per mile for a gasoline car. So for the same investment of energy, you could go 7 times farther in the Tesla.

[whistle]

25. If your math is correct it would be feasible to implement such a change over

...without a major change in the existing electrical generating capacity, and the pricing at $.12 per kwh for 7.5 kwh then would be just $.90 for a 35 mile commute. I think though that most Americans drive much more than that although I have personally changed my driving habits to keep my monthly driving down to an average of 700 miles and 35 gallons of gasoline per month. I used to drive close to 20,000 to 25,000 miles per year though with approximately 65% being job and work related.

That may still be characteristic people who rely on their cars for work purposes, but I may be off on that.

[TheWraith]

28. The 35 miles figure is supposedly the average American daily driving.

Either way, though, it certainly compares favorably to gas, which at this point would be about $4.50 for a 35 mile drive, figuring on the average US car mileage. And even if you upped the figure to 50 miles per day, then you're talking 10.75 kilowatt-hours per vehicle, and about 1,075,000 megawatt-hours to reload a fleet of one hundred million. Stretched over a 5-hour period (figuring for deepest night) that's about 20% of our generating capacity, which still easily fits in to our night time surpluses.

[IDemo]

23. Department of Energy does the math

Mileage from megawatts: Study finds enough electric capacity to 'fill up' plug-in vehicles across much of the nation

If all the cars and light trucks in the nation switched from oil to electrons, idle capacity in the existing electric power system could generate most of the electricity consumed by plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. A new study for the Department of Energy finds that "off-peak" electricity production and transmission capacity could fuel 84 percent of the country's 220 million vehicles if they were plug-in hybrid electrics.

http://www.physorg.com/news85067531.html

[whistle]

26. Well, let's do it! I'm game and tell the Arabs, "fuck you very much Sheiks"

[TheWraith]

29. Amen. I think that electric vehicles are the future.

They're clean, quiet, low maintainence, incredibly efficient, and require no new infrastructure. Not to mention that they perform better than gas-powered vehicles, you can charge them from any electrical source, and they can be built right now.

[whopis01]

34. I'm getting excited about this again!

It actually is starting to feel like this might become a reality.

[Jim Warren]

16. this could be good nt

[BadgerKid]

18. Also reported in USA today (link)

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techinnovations/2007-06-18-google-hybrid-cars_N.htm

[whopis01]

32. I don't know if I want a 100mpg car if I have to push it. n/t