ELECTRIC VEHICLE BASICS

When it comes to automobiles, there are many alternatives the the conventional internal combustion engine (ICE) and all its drawbacks - like high cost of fuel and pollution.  Of all the alternatives, some form of electric drive is most appealing (to me, at least) because of the following attributes:

ADVANTAGES

1.  Electric motors are clean.  Nothing burns, so nothing spews out the tailpipe.  In fact, there is no tailpipe.  The only pollution given off by an electric motor is heat.  This might keep you up at night if you worry endlessly about global warming, but actually looking at the long-term climatological data might let you get a little more sleep.  (Hint:  think "interglacial period")

2.  Electric motors are quiet.  This is certainly true - and very nice!  But have you listened to ICE cars today?  Many of them are so quiet that it's hard to tell if they're running (my wife's Ford Explorer, for example).  Nonetheless, electrics are even quieter.

3.  Electric motors are efficient.  Motors are generally 80-90% efficient in converting electricity into mechanical output.  No ICE can come close!

4.  Electric motors can be powerful.  Did you know that the most powerful locomotive on the planet is driven by electric motors?  Even more impressive:  the biggest icebreakers are driven by electric motors, too!  In both of these cases, the electric motors turn the wheels (or props) while diesel engines turn generators to supply electricity to the drive motors.  This common design is sometimes refered to as a "diesel (or ICE) over electric hybrid".

5.  Electric motors are mature technology.  We've been building motors for what - 150 years now?  Sure, there are small improvements to be made, but motors are probably like the bicycle or the 45 automatic pistol - mechanical designs that have been refined over years to perfectly fit their "design space". 

6.  Electric motors are proven to work in cars.  There have been several pure electric cars produced by big companies like GM (the EV1), Ford (Electric Ranger) and Toyota (the Electric RAV4).  These vehicles were much loved by their drivers, even if they were later crushed by their manufacturers (a sad and suspicious bit of history that makes my wild-eyed conspiracy source look almost believable!).  However, there's more proof all around you.  The next time you are passed by a hybrid car, realize that it's electric motors driving the wheels and supplying the speed!  The ICE in the hybrid usually just turns a generator to feed the electrics.  Another example of "ICE over electric" hybridization.

7.  Electricity is a renewable resource.  OK, right now most electricity is generated by burning fossil fuels, but it doesn't have to be that way forever.  I've seen it estimated that using _existing_ technology it would be possible to generate ALL the electricity needed by the US using just 10% of the desert in Nevada for solar generators.  The technology to do this is simple:  mirrors are used to reflect sunlight onto a tower that collects the heat and uses it to turn generators.  Such solar generators are operating at multi-megawatt capacities in Italy right now.  Having lived in the deserts southwest for most of my adult life, I can personally attest to 1) the incredible amount of solar radiation just waiting to be tapped and 2) the huge expanses of BLM stinking desert just waiting to have something useful to do.  And I strongly suspect that the increase in shade provided by a million acres of mirrors would prove to be quite a boon to the indigenous desert animals, too!

 8.  Nuclear generation is a real possibility.  Right now, France gets 10% of it's electricity from nuclear generators.  The technology has been around for half a century and has proven safer than coal, oil, etc.  The main objections to nuclear are 1) what to do with the nuclear byproducts from the reactors and 2) how to keep these plants safe from nuclear terrorists  I would like to offer my own humble solution to both objections.  We build a large number of nuclear generating stations in the area north of Las Vegas known as Nellis AFB, Groom Lake or Area 51.  This entire mammoth area is highly restricted government property into which no one can go.  We turn the running of the reactors over to the most experienced and safe nuclear engineering organization in the world - the US Navy.  We turn the security over to the most capable and experienced security force in the world - the US Marine Corps.  Remember folks,  you heard it here first!  By the time we exceed the ability of this area to house nuclear byproducts, someone will have figured out how to turn nuclear waste into fuel cells or fudge cake.

DISADVANTAGES

Now, to be fair, electric cars face some formidable challenges, too.  The biggest of all is "the battery problem".  It's easy to make an electric vehicle that would go as fast as your ICE car, and as far - IF (and it's a huge if) we had some way to power the thing.  Really long extension cords are probably impractical.  I mean, they'd always be getting tangled up! 

You see, batteries are just electricity storage devices.  You dump a bunch of electricity into them, and you can get most of it out sometime later.  The very best batteries, however, are still pretty poor at this.  That's why most electric vehicles can only get about 30-100 miles on a single charge - the batteries are so big and heavy that you can't carry enough of them to go very far.

Poor batteries are also why it takes 4-8 hours to charge up an electric car: current batteries only allow you to dump energy into them at very slow rates.  Try doing it too fast, and the batteries explode!  Batteries generally have limits on how fast they can deliver energy, too.  Once again, go too fast and the battery explodes.  During my days of electric aeromodeling I saw batteries bite the dust from both errors.  It can be quite exciting, even with a battery that weighs only 8 ounces or so.  I'd hate to see the detonation of a car full of 60 pound batteries!

So, the current sad state of battery technlogy is the main reason we aren't all driving electric supercars right now.  There are a couple of glimmers of hope on that horizon, though.  A company called Altair Nanotechnology claims to have made a type of improved battery that will be used in the Phoenix Motorcars electric cars and trucks.  This battery is claimed to take a charge much quicker than other batteries, and to hold a much greater amount of electricity, too. 

Another electricity storage device is the capacitor.  This device works differently from a battery and a company in Texas called Eestore claims to have developed a capacitor that will hold enough energy to allow an electric car to go hundreds of miles.  They also claim that it can be charged up in about 10 minutes or so!

If Eestore is telling the truth, this new storage device will revolutionize the electric car industry.  ZENN was intrigued enough to invest $2.5 million in Eestore, and intends to use the Eestore product in its cars sometime in the future.  HOWEVER, a number of electric authorities are skeptical of Eestore's claims.  It remains to be seen if their capacitor will ever be a working technology for electric cars.  We can only hope!

On the X-Files side of things there is electricity transmission.  One of the most famous of the early electric engineers was Nicola Tesla.  This guy was really a genius and pioneered many of the branches of electrical science we know so well today.  One of the wilder claims he made was that he had found a way to transmit electricity from a tower to receiving stations - without wires!  As I understand it, some of his electricity-transmission gear was still around quite a while after his death, but no one was ever able to figure out if it ever worked - or even how it was supposed to work.  According to my wild-eyed conspiracy source, the government took all Tesla's notebooks and most of his equipment after he died.  At least, that's what my source said when he was _off_ his medicine.  Whether or not it's true - I dunno.  But broadcast power would be really cool!

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