On Jan. 3, GM introduced its new electric-car prototype "Impact," which has a much improved lead-acid battery pack, weighing 870 lbs. it can be charged by household current in two hours, and gives the two seater a hitherto unseen performance in electric cars: a range of 120 miles between charge-ups, an acceleration from 0 to 60 mph in 8 seconds, and a top speed of 100 mph. The car has two front-wheel drive motors, and like all electric cars worth their salt, it uses regenerative braking: instead of turning the car's kinetic (motional) energy into heat in the brake linings, it uses it to recharge its batteries from the motors turned into generators.
The drawback, as in previous batteries, is the limited number of charging cycles. At present, the battery pack must be replaced every 20,000 miles
¾for $1,500 each time. This makes the operating cost double that of a gasoline powered car, though the initial cost, says GM, would be comparable if demand justifies putting it into mass production. That would evidently not be the case until GM prolongs the life of the battery to 50,000 miles, which it hopes to do.Amusingly, though not surprisingly, the "environmentalists" fumed. Solving problems of clean air with electric cars is dangerous, said one of their spokesmen, because it could create a huge new demand for electric power and that, in turn, would be a strong argument for (God forbid!) nuclear power. Others, including the GM wimps themselves, "acknowledged" that a change to electric cars would only lead to more smog-generating fossil fuels in the utilities. This is incredible nonsense. Yes, of course, there will be some pollution coming out of power plant stacks instead of the automobile exhaust, but:
1) The efficiency of the gasoline engine is about 20%; in city traffic it goes down to about 12%, and when the energy lost in producing gasoline from crude oil is factored in, it goes down to well under 10%. The efficiency of fossil-fired plants averages about 33%, so even if the pollution were of the same kind and proportional to the energy, you would have roughly four times less of it (and how about the holy cow of energy conservation, boosted by a factor of four?).
2) Pollution is not just proportional to energy. The bulky and sophisticated pollution control equipment of a power plant can never be achieved in a mobile source such as a car.
3) The pollution is qualitatively different. A car exhaust has most pollutants of a power plant, and then some. Its output in NOx per unit energy is very much higher.
4) All of the above goes for fossil-fired power. If the plant is nuclear, the pollution is not reduced by 75%, but totally eliminated.
And then, of course, we hear for the umpteenth time that you can run the car on solar energy. So for the umpteenth time: if you put the solar collectors on the roof and want to drive a 50 HP car only when the sun is out, the collector panel will still measure about 20 by 20 feet.
And solar energy plants on the ground? Pick a desert where to put the plant of tens of square miles; then build transmission lines through the "environmentalists" shouting "Not in my back yard!"
And don't fall for the latest hoax that a kWh of solar energy is now competitive with fossil-fired power. The cost of a kWh has three components: (1) amortization of investment, (2) fuel costs, (3) operating costs. For a coal-fired or nuclear plant, (1) means paying off the loan or sinking fund over the life of the plant. By predicting a long enough life (which you can do with impunity only for a solar plant), you can get the cost per kWh down to anything you like
¾on paper. So ask not for the cost of a kWh, ask for the cost of an installed kW (peak power divided by investment) and you will find it some 10 times more expensive than even a nuclear plant. And even then this is only peak power when the sun is out, not capacity power available at all times.|
Vol. 17, No. 6
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Issues Issue/No.: Vol. 17, No. 6 Date: December 01, 2004 03:29 PM Title: Radishes and watermelons
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