Lotus Elan and Lotus Elan Plus 2 Forums

el-saturn wrote:pretty soon you'll see this unwanted electro-garbage at dumps, where the officials will need tax money to recycle the shit for 20'000 £ PER UNIT, fellas! ill stick to my UNLEADED elan and won't run out of gas ---- and i love showing tesla drivers HOW QUICK my punk is! ------------ mine weighs not much more than a 26 ------------- cfrp

If it ain’t there for us to burn. Sure the top 1% of y’all will always find a way, because...

Our kids all learned to ride motorcycles at an early age. 2 years old. An electric trials bike, purchased for $200 almost 20 years ago. Ive replaced the batteries twice. Never charged for disposal. Actually made $10 each. When I recycle my oil, coolant etc I get charged.
For the ebike sector, seems to me. They work great.
We have electric chainsaws and lawn mowers. Both, not needing any service outside of sharpening. And have lasted 20ish years.
I am sure there is a place for fuel, and its use. I think the point about needing to cut consumption by 50% in 10 years is a real figure for any of “y’all” (or baby boomers) who have kids.

StressCraxx wrote:
PSA can use waste stream hydrocarbons and ammonia to separate the hydrogen efficiently. There is no combustion and no carbon released to the atmosphere. Ammonia from waste treatment plants is the cleanest feedstock because the only byproduct is nitrogen.

While I understand your enthusiasm for hydrogen, I don't think the issues with storage, distribution and the overall inefficiency of the production and conversion process currently makes sense for use in cars. A new technology may come along, but currently the market seems to agree with me. The numbers aren't directly comparable, but it gives an idea of the mountain that hydrogen needs to climb:

Total worldwide battery car sales 2019 (estimated) = 2.9 million vehicles
Cumulative total number of hydrogen powered vehicles on the road in the US as of Feb 2019 = 6,558

Andy8421 wrote:

mikealdren wrote:If we go all electric, how will we generate the power required for 32m cars? Given the lead time on building power stations (or green energy) I don't see how we can meet the 2030 targets.

Power consumption in the UK is very time-of-day dependent.

https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

If you zoom into the daily and weekly graphs, the difference between day and night consumption is (apparently - I haven't done the maths myself) more than enough to charge all cars in the UK overnight. Power stations run best flat out, so the electricity supply industry is very happy with the idea of electric cars - assuming that they charge overnight - as it will flatten out demand.

If everyone plugs in at 6:30pm, then there will be issue, but with a bit of smart scheduling over the period of the night there is (apparently) already sufficient capacity.

Don't underestimate the power required!

32m cars, average annual distance 5,000 km average power usage of electric cars 15kW/100km. 365*24 hours p.a.
Power required 32,000,000*5,000*15/100/365/24 = 2,740 Megawatts and that's 7*24!

I would kindly remember all members old enough the appearances of electric cars in the 80's and 90's, Audi Duo, Golf E come to my mind, with lead batteries and optimistic range of 50km and MORE !
That was 30/40 years ago, now look at a Tesla or any new electric car (I love the Honda e). Tesla started 10 years ago, look at their cars, look what infrastructure they have created ! Worldwide !

When Benz started his "car", would his neighbors think how cars should be ? They would moan about efficiency, smoke, gasoline availability, range, price ?
30 years afterwards there was a lot of progress, still expensive, but we see it from today's view and there was more to come: yet better, cheaper, safer, bigger, faster cars. Today you drive a product of 120 year evolution,

I am pretty sure Chapman would have delighted seeing possibilities of having s powerful and superlight drive and distribute weigth where he wants it. For sure, batteries are heavy, but so where most engines before the 60's. With modest output.
Just rise you view and look beyond "today". There is a future...

Now hydrogen. Yes, it is yet inefficient, very scarce hydrogen stations, no cars. So what? Look at the benefits it has:
No pollution at all, carbon-neutral, you can store it, It's portable, it's convertible into methan (and can inyect it into current pipeline infrastructure, therefore you can use it in households and industry and gas powered cars (internal combustion engines, not fuel cells).
Efficiency ?? They are working on it ....

"Batteries are heavy", "there is no range", "hydrogen is expensive", "all is inefficient".
You talk if gasoline or diesel is great, but it is not. It's polluting (always), in most common uses inefficient (short range), it's being used inefficiently (SUVs, one person in a 2ton car). Petrol is efficient if you just look at your own expenses and take not into account the pollution, problems and conflicts it creates.

Common sense should recognize that there must be a change of direction away from hydrocarbons.
A bit of patience and benevolence would be nice.

And enjoy the Elan while we are allowed to.

When considering available electrical power supply, remember the aim to do away with fossil fuel burning generating stations.
There are even now concerns over the future availability of rare earth material, this will become a major factor as wind power, solar power and all the high efficiency electric motors that have made possible practical wind power and of course EV’s.
Our planet has limited resources.

mikealdren wrote:If we go all electric, how will we generate the power required for 32m cars? Given the lead time on building power stations (or green energy) I don't see how we can meet the 2030 targets.

Yep that's always the key. The infrastructure. It's going to take absolutely enormous electricity generating capacity to change all the world's current fossil fuel powered vehicles over to electric. Probably more nuclear plants will be required as I don't see it all being possible using renewables. My company has dabbled in electrics for moderately heavy transport. It takes a 32 amp current for at least 8 hours to recharge batteries. Multiply that by the number of vehicles on the road. How much energy is contained per litre of fossil fuel? How many litres of fossil fuel are consumed by the world's population per year? Think replace all that by electricity. Do the sums regarding the generation requirements.

The key is better public transport, usage restrictions on private use of vehicles and more flexibility to allow people to work from home to reduce the need for travel.

If hydrogen needs to be stored at 10,000 psi why don't we just use compressed air and a 50 litre tank? That's about 35,000 litres of gas and there wouldn't be any combustion at all (on the vehicle) so no emissions. Perhaps a compound engine like steam ships used to use could harness the power efficiently.

Anyone care to do the arithmetic?

There used to be a bus in Switzerland, I believe, in the 1940s with two in-line wheels, powered and kept upright by a single gyroscope. I suppose they had a lot of hydro power to spin it up but it was a cute idea.

I don’t if anyone saw the Motorsport Gordon Murray interview, if not watch it on YouTube. He made some really good points about electric cars and internal combustion cars. He points out that electric cars need to carry all of the fuel whereas internal combustion engines only need to carry the carbon bit, the rest comes from the air.

The future is hydrogen, but it’s not a pure fuel, it’s an intermediary fuel, ie produced from something else. Producing from methane is pointless, produced from rubbish is good but not enough. We need to get the electrolysis efficiency better and produce from wind, solar nuclear, etc. Then we could use it in fuel cells and as an internal combustion fuel in our Elans with a high pressure gas tank in place of the fuel tank.

Donels wrote:The future is hydrogen, but it’s not a pure fuel, it’s an intermediary fuel, ie produced from something else. Producing from methane is pointless, produced from rubbish is good but not enough. We need to get the electrolysis efficiency better and produce from wind, solar nuclear, etc.

To produce hydrogen from electrolysis requires lots of electricity. Therefore it has the same supply problem as an electric car.

To produce hydrogen from methane is using a fossil fuel. Therefore it has the same supply problem as a petrol car.

Donels wrote:
The future is hydrogen, but it’s not a pure fuel, it’s an intermediary fuel, ie produced from something else. Producing from methane is pointless, produced from rubbish is good but not enough. We need to get the electrolysis efficiency better and produce from wind, solar nuclear, etc. Then we could use it in fuel cells and as an internal combustion fuel in our Elans with a high pressure gas tank in place of the fuel tank.

Unfortunately the production of hydrogen, it’s transportation and conversion to electricity in a fuel cell is far less efficient than batteries. Even if someone gave you a free tank of hydrogen, you would be far better off burning the hydrogen in a power station and using the electricity to charge the batteries in your car than using it in a fuel cell.

The use of hydrogen for vehicles needs to be thought of as a form of battery, not as a fuel as such.

So calculations of cost and convenience, speed of re-vigoration etc need to be comparisons with batteries not with hydrocarbon fuels.

This government website says that it takes only about 5 minutes to refuel a hydrogen +fuel cell car; this contradicts the message above that says it takes as long as charging a battery car.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/5- ... ic-vehicle

Ballard power no affiliation

https://www.ballard.com

Because it was local to us in western N America, has sold out to big players. The Ballard system is working on a large scale. Busses, industry etc. When it trickles down. I suspect it will be before major improvements in battery and charging technology.
Then again, maybe it is overkill. Like a nuclear reactor. Maybe if it gets scaled down enough, it will simply be, to keep batteries charged, and propel vehicle.

In large scale (buses, trucks, ships) hydrogen may have a place, although Tesla seem to think that they will revolutionise trucking with the Tesla semi:

https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/semi

The problems with hydrogen remain though, and a lot of it is down to the maths of the process. Making clean hydrogen from electricity, then turning the hydrogen back into electricity in the car is only about 40% efficient, and that ignores all the other losses in the production and delivery chain. Li-ion batteries in comparison are over 80% efficient.

If it is impractical to go down the battery route (in a large ship for example), then hydrogen is still far better than fossil fuels and may have a future. In cars, certainly at the moment, batteries come out top.

Yes that’s true but then add in the extra energy required to accelerate a tonne of battery and hydrogen is not looking as bad. For small cars the battery is a significant part of the weight. For a truck it’s less so, but then the load carrying capacity is reduced because of the huge battery weight.
Environmentally hydrogen production is also much less polluting than mining and processing lithium. Then add in the energy required in both processes and it’s becoming more balanced.
Look at the end to end processing and usage of battery compared to hydrogen. It’s much closer than you think.