Fordnatics List Archive

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Mail From: Ted Mittelstaedt <agora!toybox.central.com!tedm>


From: Eugene Y C Chu <(email redacted)>

>A lot of emission rules and regs were made to sound good superficially,
>not really to make sense. One example is the California zero emissions
>requirement; it requires that two percent of car sold here starting in
>few years (forgot exactly when) to have NO emissions at all. This
>implies without question electric vehicles. Now, knowing that electric
>vehicles are about 50% as efficient as gas powered cars, this means each
>vehicle will require twice as much energy to move around, which in turn
>means twice as much energy will be required to be generated for them.
>Now, if you use some fossile fuel to generate this energy, you might be
>able to do so with less pollutants than a car generating the same amount
>of energy. Obviously, if you can generate the electrical energy with
>solar or hydo-electrics, the emissions would be less, but your energy
>requirements is still double what you used to need. So is there a gain?
>Not if you need to burn fosille fuels to generate the extra electric
>power for the new EVs. On a more practical note, the new EVs will be
>too costly for the average motorists to be able to afford, so they'll
>most likely be purchased by more affluent motorists. If you looked
>around here at all the cars on the roads, you'll find that the major
>poluters are not the affluent automobiles, but the old, junkie cars
>driven by people who can't afford to fix them or buy new cars. So this
>EV mandate will probably not affect motor vehicle air pollution around
>here, at least not for the first few years.

Hold on here!
I'm not from California, I live in Oregon, but I thing there are some holes
in this reasoning.

The efficiency numbers you toss out are just guesses. There is no way to
make a general comparison between efficiency ratings of electric cars and
gas powered cars. You can make specific comparisons, but that's it.

There is a basic thing about motors, both gas and electric here. That is
this - both of these devices are inefficient when they are not run at a
constant speed, espically internal combustion motors. In addition, electric
motors lose efficiency when run with varying loads.

In a vehicle, it is impossible to run a motor at a constant load or speed,
tuning is merely the process of attempting to approach this ideal. We change
gearing in dragsters to put a better load at lower or higher RPM's depending
on whether we have optimized the engine's power point in the range. However
we never can reach the optimum.

A properly designed electric car can have it's load range (adjusted through
gearing) matched to it's electric motors highest efficiency range (adjusted
through number of wire windings, voltage & current, etc) to approach the ideal
of constant speed & load. The true efficiency measure is going to vary as
well. Who knows, we may yet see tuners of the future argueing about how
much current to dump into the windings, or rebuilding shops selling "hi-pro"
armatures.

Even if we accept your statements at face value, think of this:

The energy has to come from somewhere, so it is going to mostly come from
burning fossil fuels. (barring solar) This burning is going to create
pollution, whether it is created at the user end in the car or the production
end at the generating plant, it is going to be created.

There is absolutely no way in hell that you can design an internal
combustion engine in a vehicle to run as efficiently as you can design an
internal combustion engine to run at a constant speed, with a constant load
at a generating plant. Even adding in the basic inefficiency of converting
the energy into an intermediate form, (electricity) and the transmission line
losses, battery losses, and totally discounting losses with liquid fuel
transport & storage, you are going to come out way ahead in the efficiency
game if the fossil fuel is burned at a central location, under controlled
conditions, than at the end user side in the vehicle. Most of the energy
at the vehicle is not converted into motion, it is converted into heat and
dumped out the tailpipe and radiator. In reality, generating plants don't even
USE internal combustion engines, they use steam! 99% of the heat gets dumped
right into the boiler! Not to mention that crude oil has to be refined even
further into gas (expending energy) where at a generating plant it can be
burned directly!

This of course totally ignores the fact that pollution can be controlled
far better at ONE location than a million cars!

And, on the practical note there is this to consider. Most of those
junky cars polluting the place were once nice new cars.

As time passes those expensive new electric
cars will become junky old electric clunkers, bought by the poor people driving
junky old clunkers today. And, despite popular opinion, junky old clunkers
driven by people too poor to fix them usually don't last very long.

The other thing is you say 2% of vehicles sold? What if no one buys them?
Then to meet the law what do the automakers do? Well, they will obviously
have to lower the price until they all get bought, thats what! That will
end up with 2% of the polluting gas vehicles being replaced, regardless of
who owns them.

I wish I knew what the "average motorist" is, I cannot even consider buying
a new gasoline powered car today! $20,000 spent on a piece of crap that you
drive down the street and get broadsided by some kid in their daddys 4X4?
Sheesh! For a tenth of the cost, you can affort to buy a 15 year old car with
a nice interior and get the entire engine and powertrain replaced!

Of ourse, all this is just blowing out the rear because my prediction is
that knowing California, the automakers will find some loophole and kill the
electric car requirement.

Believe me, I don't mean to jump on you, but I really get sick of hearing
people bash electric cars, and no I don't own one. I just wish the lawmakers
here would pass as good a law as that 2% rule. If someone could mass-produce
a lightweight plastic battery it would probably make electric vehicles
replace gas cars, and if you want to see a fighting-to-the-death-industry-that-
wants-to-keep-doing-it-the-same-way-their-granpappys-did then look at the
battery industry. You ever wonder why Duracell, Everyready & others didn't
get into the laptop battery market, and instead electronics companies like
Panasonic & Sony were forced to do it themselves? It's because the ordinary
carbon AA that sells for a dollar apeice on the retail market costs only
$0.05 to manufacture, that's why it is!! And, if the major automakers are
actually forced into considering making decent electric cars their going to
have to do the R&D on their own batteries, mark my words!

Anyway, since this is my first post to this list, here is the obligatory
info:

I have owned, raced, & worked on my '68 Torino GT for about 6 years now,
it's got a 302 and as is typical with all new wannabe racers I did just
about everything wrong when I first started building the engine. :-)
Unfortunately, a year after I got it back from the paint shop with a
beautiful acrylic urethane finish I took out a Pontiac Fiero with it.
Visible damage to the car was limited to the left front fender, but the front
frame was bent so even though I fixed the fender and the car is driveable
I just can't seem to get the same interest in it that I had originally.
Also another thing on a more practical note was that the rear end is
really hashed. (9" Detroit Locker) It's currently sitting waiting for me to
deal with the axle. I suppose I should sell it, but I have too much time
in it to do that, besides I have every goodie they ever put in those. (like,
the _original_ factory tach, with the black faceplate, not the silver ones
like in the more plentiful '69s, the factory clock, even rarer)

Ted
(email redacted)

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Mail From: Eugene Y C Chu <(email redacted)>

Well, I think I was considering just the efficiencies of the electric motor
and batteries vs a fossile fueled car. Count the extra load of the battery
against its power consumed vs work performed ratio. I'll agree that a power
plant will very likely generate electric power more cleanly than a car, but
I doubt the 99% efficiency that you mentioned. Some heat must be lost to
the smoke stacks that vent out the exhuast, and the steam turbines must keep
some heat to recirculate the water. At this time, my cost for electric
power is about 3 times that of gasoline; about 330 btu/c vs 1000 btu/c,
including all taxes. Without taxes, the gasoline will be cheaper yet.
Something is making electricity more costly to produce, implying that it
is consuming more resources to produce. There's a small percentage of the
electric power around here that's generated by waterfalls and neutrons,
but it's mostly by the consumption of fossile fuels. The reality is
when you have to convert one form of energy to another, some loss is
inevitable. Burning natural gas or oil to heat water into steam to move
turbines that turn generators to produce electricity, transporting the
electricity over resistive wires and transformers, charging batteries,
and then powering electric motors puts the energy through more stages of
conversion, and associated losses, than to transport the gasoline to the
gas stations, pumped into cars, and then burned in an automobile engine.
Both fuels have to be refined (maybe not natural gas), but there's only
one stage of energy conversion in the gasoline engine.

I'm not "slamming" electric cars, but I don't think that the CARB and
SCAQMD realize that they are not the solution. I think a recent
Autoweek mentioned that the Big 3 manufacturers are actually considering
paying the $5000 per car penalty that they'd have to pay if they didn't
meet their 2% quota; it would cost them less that way than to pay for
the development to build EVs, and then to give sufficient incentives to
people to try them. Plus, even if they lowered the cost sufficiently
for more people to buy them, it still will not affect the "10% of the
old cars that are responsible for 90% of the polution", because those
people who can't afford new cars will not buy EVs.

The one advantage I see in current EVs over the gas powered cars is in
rush hour traffic, where bumper to bumper stop and crawl driving dumps
a disproportionately high amount of smoke into the air. If developments
in EVs lead to better battery technolegy, that would be great too.

As a side note, I seem to recall in one of the tech journals an article
about how it took more energy to manufacture a solar cell than the cell
would be able to produce in all its useful life. I wonder what the real
efficiencies of rechargeable batteries are when you take into
consideration the energy used to produce them. Fossile fuels obviously
give back more energy than it took to refine them, as the refining
process consumes fossile fuels. Of course I know we can't depend on it
forever. But until we have a practical alternative, that's all we got
for now. Trying to rush into a different technology that's not yet
ready is not the right approach.

Enough philosophizing.

Let's all go out and burn some more dead dynosaur juice and have some
fun with our smog generators on wheels.

eyc

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Mail From: "Fontana Peter" <(email redacted)>

> I thing there are some holes in this reasoning.
You may be right, but you seriously detract from your position by countering
with a less well constructed rebuttal.

> The efficiency numbers you toss out are just guesses.
Based on my reading, those comparisons are generous to the EV proponents.
The guesses you made in your rebuttal are far more out of line with reality.

> There is no way to make a general comparison between efficiency
> ratings of electric cars and gas powered cars. You can make specific
> comparisons, but that's it.
General statements have to taken as such. The correct criticism here would
be to cite examples where you provide hard numbers for a specific EV
(intended for road use and within certain cost boundaries) and show where the
general statement you're attacking is essentially incorrect - since you have
provided none (and there is none that I'm aware of) the general comparison as
originally posted stands as basically sound.

There is a basic thing about motors, both gas and electric here. That is
this - both of these devices are inefficient when they are not run at a
constant speed, espically internal combustion motors. In addition, electric
motors lose efficiency when run with varying loads.

> Even adding in the basic inefficiency of converting
> the energy into an intermediate form, (electricity) and the transmission
line
> losses, battery losses, and totally discounting losses with liquid fuel
> transport & storage, you are going to come out way ahead in the efficiency
> game if the fossil fuel is burned at a central location, under controlled
> conditions, than at the end user side in the vehicle.
Talk about a pile of guesses! Yikes - I wouldn't stand on that teetering
hill of guesses if I were you - !

> This of course totally ignores the fact that pollution can be controlled
> far better at ONE location than a million cars!
And you're totally ignoring the fact a single rich, powerful private lobby
can get waivers, exceptions, and special legislation to let the one single
controllable plant pollute way beyond the where the current state of the art
*could* have it. I don't know how old you are, but I've seen a few plants
(and other single points of pollution) get approved by "swayed" legislative
bodies - built where they shouldn't, operating with older, dirtier, cheaper
technology, etc. The individual motorist has very little say, and (as we're
seeing with this very subject), it's easier to push around a million
taxpayers/consumers than it is to properly control a handful of industrial
entities.

> If someone could mass-produce
> a lightweight plastic battery it would probably make electric vehicles
> replace gas cars,
Let me guess - you're saying the battery industry doesn't WANT to solve this
problem?

Sorry Ted, but you'll have to defend the socialist 2% 0-emissions-vehicle
sales quota legislation better.

I think EVs have a future, but if forced to the road at this point in their
development, they would be responsible for siginficantly more pollution per
mile driven - not less (as compared to an internal combustion car with
similar capacities and performance).

(Hot tip: counter guesses and estimates with real numbers and research - not
guesses of your own.)

This read-only message was archived from a public mail list.
Mail From: (email redacted) (Brian Kelley)


Ted Mittelstaedt writes:

>Hold on here!
> I'm not from California, I live in Oregon, but I thing there are some holes
>in this reasoning.

Ditto!


> The other thing is you say 2% of vehicles sold? What if no one buys them?
>Then to meet the law what do the automakers do? Well, they will obviously
>have to lower the price until they all get bought, thats what! That will
>end up with 2% of the polluting gas vehicles being replaced, regardless of
>who owns them.

I don't agree that the electric vehicles will displace gasoline
vehicles. The cars will get *sold*, but most people who buy them will
still have a gas powered car.

> I wish I knew what the "average motorist" is, I cannot even consider buying
>a new gasoline powered car today! $20,000 spent on a piece of crap that you
>drive down the street and get broadsided by some kid in their daddys 4X4?

That is why you are required to carry full coverage insurance on a
car until it is paid off (I believe that is true in most all states).

>Sheesh! For a tenth of the cost, you can affort to buy a 15 year old car with
>a nice interior and get the entire engine and powertrain replaced!

I can agree with that. When you can buy a completely restored '69
Mach I with a big block (but not matching numbers), toploader and
detroit locker for $12,000 who wants a '94 5.0 for $21,000? Of course
financing that $12,000 can be *much* more difficult than financing a
'94.

Many of the new cars you see on the road today are leased and not
purchased. I very recently decided to take a 2 year lease on a '95
F-150. I strongly considered buying a used truck, but my payment
wouldn't have been all that different and I would have had to deal
with many more mechanical issues (I'm towing a car with it). In
two years, I can just get another new truck. With the lease truck,
I just need to change the oil and can focus my wrench time on my 5.0.
And with my Escort GT gone, I have 3 5.0's :-)

> Of ourse, all this is just blowing out the rear because my prediction is
>that knowing California, the automakers will find some loophole and kill the
>electric car requirement.

I very seriously doubt it. Ford's electric vehicle program has been
in full swing for a long while now. They have a tremendous amount of
money invested in the program. GM had a program, then stupidly killed
it because it was expensive and they were in financial trouble. They
then "remembered" that they *had* to comply or lose the enormous
California market (and re-started the program).

California may think that by mandating electric vehicles, they'll get
miracles, but I just don't see it happening. Everything that I have
read leads me to believe that the technology isn't ready to be sold in
a free market (and won't be any time soon). Sure, they can sell it if
they make the price low enough, but I suspect they're going to lose a
huge amount of money on every car and that the development costs will
take a long while to recoupe. But they'll get to sell cars in
California. And despite all of the enviro-speak you hear from that
state, there are a lot of drivers and those folks still buy a Lot of
cars.

>If someone could mass-produce
>a lightweight plastic battery it would probably make electric vehicles
>replace gas cars,

That is exactly the problem. _IF_ someone could produce one. The
costs are too high, the batteries are too toxic, the environmental impact
from their production and eventual disposal are arguably worse than
the pollution from a gas powered car.

Replace gas cars? I don't think I am a minority on this list when I
declare that you can pull my internal combustion powered vehicle from
my cold, dead hands. Give me at least one V8, or give me death!

> You ever wonder why Duracell, Everyready & others didn't
>get into the laptop battery market, and instead electronics companies like
>Panasonic & Sony were forced to do it themselves?

How about because the R&D costs Many millions of dollars and is very
high risk? You can sink hundreds of millions into development and
still not develop a product that can meet all of the necessary
criteria (low cost, light weight, long life, safe, etc). Panasonic
and Sony are both Japanese companies with enormous amounts of investor
money behind them. I don't know much about the background of the
other battery companies.


IMHO,

Brian

- ---
(email redacted)
Most definitely not speaking for Ford.

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Mail From: (email redacted) (Frank Marrone)

One of the reasons that CAs zero emmissions law is so silly
is that it precludes the gas/electric hybrid. the hybrid solves
many of the range/efficiency problems of both power sources.
It could be great fun maxing out your small gas drive, and
you only have to do it for anarrow rpm range without much
thought to the normal drivability issues!



- --
Frank Marrone at (email redacted)
1965 Sunbeam Tiger B9471116
1960 Sunbeam Alpine Series I B9009330

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Mail From: (email redacted) (Jay Fletcher)

Brian Kelly writes:

Sure, they can sell it if
they make the price low enough, but I suspect they're going to lose a
huge amount of money on every car and that the development costs will
take a long while to recoupe.

I read an article in the San Jose paper saying that Chrysler had stated
that they were going to stop complaining about the 2% requirement in CA.

Instead they would build EV's and just pass the cost on to the customer.
ALL of the customers, that is. In order to allow their electric minivans
to compete with non-electric equivalents, they will raise the price of ALL
of their procuct lines. It was estimated that each EV would have to be
subsidized on the order of $30,000 to make it price competetive.

That's about $600/vehicle sold! Are we all really willing to spend that
much to let electric cars get a foot in the door so that we can spend
alot more later to maybe work out some of the bugs of a technology that
may someday improve our quality of life, maybe?

I suppose we'll be subsidizing their toxic waste spill insurance too.

Jay

Not speaking for my employer either.

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Mail From: (email redacted) (Doug Bailey)



Does "Zero Emmissions" legislation mean zero emissions of CO,
NO, NO2, O3, HC's, and so on ( H2O and CO2 are OK)?

I saw a TV program (Next Step, Beyond200 or some such)
that featured a Saab with a gas engine and zero emissions.
In fact, they measured the pollution going through the
aircleaner to be greater than the pollution coming out
of the tail pipe!

Did anyone else see this?

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Mail From: Ron Rader aka PTM <(email redacted)>

>California may think that by mandating electric vehicles, they'll get
>miracles, but I just don't see it happening.

The thing I find exceedingly annoying about this issue is the attitude
of the gummint representatives supporting the 2% electric vehicle mandate.
They are very smug in the belief that through this mandate, all sorts of
wonderful technology will drop like manna from heaven and solve all our
air pollution woes.

Don't get me wrong: I would love to have a decent electric vehicle
for in-town commuting. I just don't want it forced down the market's
throat, because State-mandated solutions are going to nail us all (at
least in the pocketbook).

>Replace gas cars? I don't think I am a minority on this list when I
>declare that you can pull my internal combustion powered vehicle from
>my cold, dead hands. Give me at least one V8, or give me death!

"They'll take my V8 when they pry it from my cold, dead hands."
I agree completely!

Has anyone been thinking about resurrecting the steam engine to solve
some of the pollution woes? Seems to me that an alcohol-fired boiler
could take care of a lot of problems with using alcohol as fuel for
an internal combustion engine.

Ron "Hmmmm" Rader

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Mail From: (email redacted)

> The thing I find exceedingly annoying about this issue is the attitude
>of the gummint representatives supporting the 2% electric vehicle mandate.
>They are very smug in the belief that through this mandate, all sorts of
>wonderful technology will drop like manna from heaven and solve all our
>air pollution woes.

> Don't get me wrong: I would love to have a decent electric vehicle
>for in-town commuting. I just don't want it forced down the market's
>throat, because State-mandated solutions are going to nail us all (at
>least in the pocketbook).

Thats what amazes me most about this issue, well, second to the fact that
these people try to extrapolate million-year-old environmental trends based
on less than 100 years observations.

- --- Why not let capitalism run it's course. I understand capitalism will not
"save the planet", but if electrical cars are demanded then it will happen.
I would even support the govt saying that the car manufacturers had to bve
able to supply up to 2% if it were demanded, But having to sell 2% is
ridiculous.

-Tom