Who Killed the Electric Car?

[Cobbles]

Electric vehicles (EV's) beat fossil fuel powered ones in pretty much every category......

"The home-built electric eventually got up to highway speeds on the flat or downhill, but I had to stop on a medium steep hill to allow cameras to reset for my arrival, and the car just didn’t have the power to get up the hill without a running start."

Apart from actually being usable in the real world.

Notably. the car that went head to head with a Ferrari and beat it in a drag racewas a Wrightspeed prototype (an Ariel with a Hoover moter and a load of laptop battreies - a snip at $200,000 - if it ever dribbles into "production") - it's reeeealy just like a Ferrari (apart from the absence of fripperies like bodywork and upholstery. Its range is limited to 100 miles (of average highway driving - what's the point of buying a sports car and taking it out for an average highway drive) so you'll need a Hummer and a trailer to get it to the venue for a track day.

 

[GarfieldLeChat]

And quieter...!

no they wouldn't social conditioning means you expect a level of noise when something is appraoching at over 5 mph without that noise you'll see a signifcant increase in pedestrain accidents and cyclist accidents as they don't 'see' the cars coming by hearing them...

it's entirely false to assume that making vechiles quiter is of benifit...

 

[xenon]

Yep. IF electric cars ever become present in significant numbers, I hope they have some artificial sound generator rather than run silent. Otherwise it's gonna be messy.

 

[Fruitloop]

I assume they won't be quieter than bicycles? To be honest it might be better if people got into the habit of looking rather than assuming that if they can't hear anything there's nothing there.

 

[GarfieldLeChat]

I assume they won't be quieter than bicycles? To be honest it might be better if people got into the habit of looking rather than assuming that if they can't hear anything there's nothing there.

you can assume that they won't be qutier than bicycles but that's not what your ears will assume even with no fossile based propulsion at all you will get used to the low level of noise a car makes and ignore it... like th eold milk floats noise which you learned to ignore...

 

[Chz]

The main issue with electric cars isn't even the battery technology, poor though it is. You could always just cram enough batteries into some over-heavy vehicle to get what you need.

It's charging them. When you're able to charge overnight, no problem. But if you have a 300 mile range electric car and you need to go 350 miles, there's a problem. In a petrol powered car, I can put in enough gas in 1 minute to drive another 100 miles. You would need to have a small power station on-site and a cable thicker than your arm to charge a battery that fast. Never mind the potential safety hazard of letting people play with that kind of juice.

It's unfortunate that it's a lot more difficult these days to build a bare-bones car for maximum fuel economy. Firstly because people have got used to their creature comforts, and second due to safety regs. There were perfectly acceptable 50hp cars in the past that could probably get over 60mpg using modern technology. But without crumple zones, airbags, abs, traction control, power windows, air conditioning, a full set of 3-point harnesses, reinforced doors, pedestrian protection, side impact curtains and so on it would be difficult to sell. That stuff adds weight (a lot of it!) and some of it saps engine power directly in addition to the weight penalty. Want a six-speed instead of a 4? That's an extra 100 lbs too.

 

[xenon]

I assume they won't be quieter than bicycles? To be honest it might be better if people got into the habit of looking rather than assuming that if they can't hear anything there's nothing there.

Some of us pedestrians can't look.

 

[GarfieldLeChat]

Some of us pedestrians can't look.

but you are stopping he envrioment gettign better why can't you be less evil