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What are your views towards electric cars? They are advertised as 'green' due to a much lower consumption of fossil fuels. However, in order to create the batteries for these cars, there has been a massive spike in rare earth mining in more recent years. The processes that yield these rare earth elements are not green at all. They utilize diesel machinery, a plethora of chemical agents for refining, and do it in such a way that it is non-sustainable. Mind you, the majority of REEs come from China as well, where they are even more lax in regards to both protecting the environment and protecting the workers.


I personally believe that the concept of these vehicles is an excellent one, but the current processes taken to create them do not really help the environment at all. Instead the extent of damage to the environment is just shifting hands, from the car owners to the people mining these resources.

Of course, rare earth elements go into many other devices, such as phones, tablets, surgical equipments, but a large amount of demand recently has been due to this notion that green cars are actually green.


Share your thoughts.

Well, given that electricity can be generated in ways that do not harm the environment (check out LFTR), yes, I think electric cars have a great potential for benefiting the environment, especially if sustainable rare earth minerals mining is more widely used.

This car is greener than most, as it's a real 200+ mpg, as opposed to the bullshit mpg calculated for plug-in hybrids such as the Volt.

http://www.roadandtrack.com/future-cars/spy-photos/caught-testing-2014-volkswagen-xl1/

To me, a real green car would be tandem seating (one in front, one in back) to halve the frontal surface area, real aerodynamics (no concessions to fashion and looks), extreme lightweight allowing narrower tires, which in turn reduces road friction, and the lightweight simply reduces acceleration costs as well, and finally, regenerative breaking. Combine all this with motors receiving their electricity from hydrogen fuel cells, and your exhaust is water vapor. The compressed hydrogen, should in turn be produced from the ocean in the most environmentally friendly manner. All methods of electricity generation are fraught with problems, so a true analysis of the best is important. We can rule out hydroelectric, as dams should just be destroyed, period.

Because of the low energy density of batteries, electric cars aren't actually much more efficient than internal combustion automobiles.  They are cheaper to operate because coal is cheaper than oil.  So unless they use nuclear or renewable energy, they aren't particularly 'green'.

On a sidenote: Regarding peak Oil and alternative energies people should watch: "The Collapse".
In his opinion cars are gonna be history and only for the rich when the oil is gonna start to be scarce.
"There not gonna be 800 million new electric cars. Cause there ain't gonna be enough oil."

Also, electricity isn't a source of energy, it's a way of transporting energy from where it's generated to where it's used.

In a car (as we know it now) oil is needed for:

-Electronics
-Varnish
-Paint
-Tires
-Plastic parts
-Motor oil

http://www.rpmgo.com/images2009/Car-Parts.jpg

Of course there parts that are not excist out of oil.
But the making of them is a energy intesive proces and does cost alot of oil.

-Making of the steel.
-Making of the glass.
-Making of the stuff that excists out of oil in general.

And do not forget the shipping around to your car dealer will cost alot of oil.
And of course i will have forgot something. But these lists are just to get an idea.

Anyone who thinks hybrids are better for the environment has never seen the amount of toxic waste that gets chucked into rivers due to lithium mining. In addition to which there's the extra fossil fuels used in making those cars - Top Gear in the UK got the stats together and worked out that due to the extra fuel involved in producing/shipping all of the parts around the world, a prius doesn't get more economical than a range rover until it's done about 90000 miles.
By that time it probably needs a new battery anyway  :D

That Volkswagen looks interesting though. Not a fan of the skinny tyres but as an aerodynamicist I have to say it looks pretty reasonable. Back's still not perfect though and they could probably improve it a few percent with wheel covers.

* Ford's hemp car (article) (http://greenlivingideas.com/2009/09/09/74-years-henry-ford-predicted-hemp-cars-powered-biofuels/)
* Ford's hemp car (youtube) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLKDTfQMhfg)

Skinny tires are preferable due to less road friction. They provide the same traction as fatter tires if you reduce the weight of the car. Double win: less road friction and less weight = same traction but allows for two factors which are increasing efficiency.

Wider tyres + Lower weight = Better traction  ;)

For the few percent you save I'd rather have a car that can brake and turn extremely well. The 3-5% you might get on fuel efficiency seems tempting, but believe me when you've just hit someone's bumper/dog/child it won't seem like such a great idea.

*sigh*

Take any car on the road that satisfies your traction requirements. Cut its weight in half. You now gain efficiency due to less weight. Now reduce the tire's width until it has the same traction as the original heavier car. You now gain efficiency due to less road friction.

Double win.

Furthermore, the less weight means you'll stop quicker and won't hit that bumper/dog.

Triple win.

Furthermore, you can gain even more efficiency if you increase the diameter of the wheels/tires significanctly, due to what is know as the angle of attack.

Automobiles need to be rethought. Unfortunately, everyone has expectations about what a car is supposed to look like.

http://www.google.com/search?q=volkswagen+xl1&hl=en&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=05ciUJLdEKLI2gW8p4CgBg&sqi=2&ved=0CF8QsAQ&biw=1156&bih=1027

Your a fool, Take a 1lb car, With whatever fucking bigwide wheels you want, And you wont even beable to drive with all that spinning out you'll be doing.
YOU NEED WEIGHT TO APPLY POWER TO THE ROAD

Could someone just slap down the laws of math that show how "traction" works? so that we dont have a bunch of stupid bickering over tires.
were trying to talk about ecenomical effeciency for the enviroment by building electric(style) cars

Now thats what i call a green car 8)

It's not exactly difficult maths to work out that a greater contact patch is capable of producing greater friction (and hence greater lateral load for example).
Yes you end up with less traction per unit surface area of the contact patch due to lower loading on each section, but under real-world conditions with real materials the relationship is non-linear (whereas the increase in lateral load due to excess weight is) and as a result you're better off with the greatest possible contact patch area (read - wider wheels) on a dry surface.

The only situation where this isn't true is on a wet surface, as a wider tyre will be less likely to dig in, particularly if the tread blocks are quite large.
This is also why rally snow tyres are typically very narrow.

Yes, weight helps you put down power, but with the right suspension and tyre setup any road car can realistically be manageable. Besides, I don't think "MOAR POWER" is the aim of "green" vehicles  ;) I very much doubt you'll be drifting a 235Mpg VW in the dry  :D

I'm not sure this is true.  Mass (what you are calling weight) occurs in equal amounts in both parts of the equation.

In the case of the friction needed to transfer power to the road, the force of gravity on that mass (actual weight) provides the normal force component of the equation (Friction = Coefficient of friction times the normal force). Normal force = mass times the acceleration provided by gravity.

Acceleration of the vehicle is directly dependent on mass as well (Acceleration = Force, provided by the friction against the road, divided by mass)

Since mass is in both the numerator and the denominator of the Acceleration (in the numerator as the mass component of the friction force) in equal amounts, they should cancel out.

In other words, that 1lb car doesn't need nearly as much power applied to the road to get the same acceleration because it doesn't need to accelerate nearly as much mass.  You reduce the power that you attempt to apply to the road until you get to the same acceleration as the heavy car, and you find that the wheels don't spin out at all.

As far as I know there isn't any area of contact patch in any of the friction equations.  Friction is typically coefficient of friction times the normal force.  As you point out, the tread pattern and shape of the tire can influence the coefficient of friction by influencing the percentage of tire surface that is contacting wet, or dirty, or oily, or clean, or dry pavement.  Assuming clean, dry, consistent road surface the size of the contact patch shouldn't effect traction/friction.

Technically this may be true, but there are so many different hybrid technologies out there that you have to be careful about tossing them all in together and discussing them as though they don't have differences.

As an example, while the Toyota HSD does use a gasoline burning internal combustion piston engine, it does not use the Otto cycle engine that most modern vehicles use.  Instead it uses a modified Atkinson cycle where the the power stroke is essentially longer than the compression stroke.  This makes for an engine that is significantly more efficient than the "godawfull inefficient piston engine" of most vehicles.

Very correct!
But surely they've got the car wheels designed for tarmac/pavement. And yeah no, I dont think you can even drift this car on solid ground :P, On that note i wonder how well it would perform on sand

Wikispeed and Silkroad can team up to develop a hemp car.  ;D

Now that would be a "green" car.  ;D

I've thought about the most efficient automobile designs, and found this concept interesting. This (http://www.yankodesign.com/2010/02/23/its-not-rollercircle-its-3d/) seems like the apex of efficiency if it can be safely built and put into production.

I see two possible improvements:

- Wheels the diameter of the ball which exist on each side. I believe this would result in much less friction.
- Tandem seating, as in a Piper Cub, Aviat Husky, etc. This would reduce the frontal area by half.

Aerodynamically however it's rubbish  :D

Electric cars are slowly becoming better and better.  Right now they either are too expensive or have too limited range.  The rare earth issue is much less of an issue then it is made out to be though.   

Regular cars use lots of rare earths and nickel (in the metals and the cat) which is just as dirty as the rare earths in batteries.   Most of these metals in both the cat and in electric car batteries are collected and recycled now. 

I'd like to see cars drive themselves. Imagine a intelligently operated system that is maintaining and monitoring the flow of each vehicle.
All you do is enter in the address where you would like to go like many do now with GPS and wait.
Even with gas powered cars the savings in fuel would be massive since we would eliminate all the floor it to the next stop light drivers and reduce/eliminate congestion.
Cars then could be run on smaller more efficient motors/gear ratios since you wont go over the speed limit and we wouldn't need to ever worry about traffic tickets, DUI's and accident related deaths/injuries again.

Until you mistake a 2013 for a 2014.

2012 plugin toyota prius, anyone know the mile range? plus how many miles it goes on its own gas tank

European safety regulations have absolutely ruined cars nowadays.  Thanks, assholes.

what have they done

Notice how every car now looks like an un-aerodynamic tank?  That stupidity originated in Europe, when insurance companies discovered that it's more cost-effective to hit cyclists without breaking their legs.  Now literally more gasoline is wasted driving inefficient, stupid-looking cars than is saved by the hipsters who ride bikes around thinking they're being ecologically friendly.

If everyone rode bikes, no one would have to redesign cars to be total aerodynamic crap-heaps...

And the amount of fatal collisions would drop down to next to nothing...

And no one would buy gas to commute...

And no one would be too fat...

(And the demand for food would skyrocket. Oh, wait... That's happening anyways.)

Fix the broken bike infrastructure, not the cars that hit the bikes. This is one aspect that even China is doing better (http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/evanosnos/2011/03/the-bike-lanes-of-beijing.html) at.

I worked on a team in the EcoCAR competition a few years back, which, among other things, had a goal of making the "most green car". Trust me when I say car manufacturers are thinking about far more than fuel when they design these cars. Granted, marketing is surely putting a spin on things, but there are a lot of other factors to consider. In actuality, we found (from GM's own analysis tools) that creating an all-electric car is much less green than you might think. It's still a Really Good Thing™, but you have to consider other things as well.

We had to do a "Well-to-Wheel analysis" on the vehicle, and found that all-electric vehicles weren't coming out so great after all. We found that a plugin hybrid electric vehicle was in fact the way to go, but preferred a smaller battery. I believe the Volt's general logic is something along the lines of "run on electricity as much as you can" whereas we preferred to make more intelligent decisions on when to choose gas over electric.

You did pick up on the battery, but you missed the big one: That electricity has to come from somewhere. It is a sad fact that most of our grid power comes from Coal right now, though that seems to be in decline. Now admittedly, not everyone in the world uses coal power, but when you're doing an analysis like this, you take averages. So effectively more than 50% of our electricity used was being counted as if it came from Coal. That's not very green at all. You just moved the problem.

I do think the Volt is a step in the right direction, but I bought a new car last year, and it was not a volt. Not because I couldn't afford it, but because I don't think we've solved the problem yet. That being said, there is something to be said for putting more demand on the electric grid - if it increases, eventually someone will start thinking about how we can start decommissioning these coal power plants.

Here in Ontario, most power comes from Nuclear (Hydro takes 2nd place). I believe all fossil fuel plants are scheduled to be shut down in 2014.

I should have qualified that with "most power in the US" :) I know very little about this stuff outside of what I learned from this project, which was very US-focused, even if we had some Canadian teams. I am a software engineer, and don't think about these things very often :)

I now know a hell of a lot about how to develop a hybrid control system, but very little about how to... well... change a tire.

For the majority of consumer vehicles the front end isn't the most glaring problem from an aero point of view - it's the fat tail. you essentially have to be willing to lengthen the car a bit (adds cost) or reduce headroom in the back, as well as reducing storage space (also not popular) to achieve any sort of sensible Cd.

For a lot of saloon cars with a steep rear window, you can improve aerodynamic efficiency by a few percent by installing vortex generators - if anyone's interested I can explain how to size them, because unfortunately basically every kit on the market is made for massive twatsicles who put VGs on because they think it looks "sporty" and massively over-size them which just makes things worse.

simple thing...when you're building these roads these days you have a better vision of the use. in the 1950s & 60s I guess Europe & USA envisioned cheap oil for 100 years

consider all the cost of transporting gasoline to the stations. power grids are already setup. most houses can charge the cars. only thing that is semi needed is charge stations to replace gas stations perhaps swipe your card and pay 50% premium for electricity away from home

You're ignoring the Volkswagen XL1, or its predecessor.

Um, no.  This is backwards.  The grid is around 95% efficient.  Typical fossil fuel power plants are limited by endoreversible thermodynamic efficiency to somewhere around 45%.  Co-generation plants might achieve 75% efficiency in the ideal case.

all middle class should have home solar power

Solar power is good for running air conditioning in the middle of the day.  Electric cars charge at night.

Solar Panel->Battery

Cars are an excellent place to put solar panels on, especially foldable ones that can be put on the windows. This keeps it from becoming superheated and generates electricity at the same time. It's killing two birds with one stone.

Some types of renewable energy are not suited for cars, however:

• Wind Power: Unless it's a really windy day and the car is nearly stopped, this will waste more energy than it will generate.
• Geothermal Power: Quite obvious, hopefully.
• Hydro Power: Hopefully still obvious.

Cars can certainly be powered by those generation methods, they just need to be used at the power station, rather than on the vehicle.

Battery technology needs to improve a good bit before electric cars are really suited for the masses.

Compressed hydrogen is an excellent method for energy storage. Hydrogen fuel cells convert the hydrogen to electricity and produce water vapor as the exhaust.

Energy storage is important, but what about the other parts of energy? I think energy production and energy conservation are too often ignored.

I'm not ignoring energy production. It should have the following qualities:

- Renewable
- Environmentally friendly

Most have some tradeoffs and environmental issues. Even wind farms.

Energy storage should be dense, and allow recharging quickly. Hydrogen meets those requirements to some degree. See the Honda FCX Clarity ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_FCX_Clarity ), which does pretty well. Improvements will continue.

I'm not a huge fan of wind. It seems the geographic footprint is high.

To me, the best reduction in geographic footprint and land friendly energy production would be some combination of an offshore wind farm combined with tidal and wave power (which are fish friendly) combined with floating solar panels for the production of converting sea water to hydrogen.

Like said: Check: http://torrentz.eu/20a8bef3a8426c741f39d4a553a5792abf2c5e6a
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1503769/

what's the point of watching

What's the point of posting this?
The point of watching is that it's a nice docu and will inform you about some things regarding energy.

Looked to me like an econ documentary, but the two are so closely intertwined, I won't contest that statement.

One of my biggest criticisms of mainstream environmentalism is that it often gets its priorities wrong because it fails to see the bigger picture.  

When it comes to automobiles, there far is too much attention going to the vehicle and not enough attention to the transport system as a whole.

The automobile is just one cog in the industrial complex that is the modern transport system.  This system consist not just of automobiles, but highway systems, refineries, gas stations, parking spaces, etc. but most importantly, the cities that are designed to accommodate cars.  

After 100 years and trillions of dollars spent on R+D, modern automobiles are already highly optimized, and are fast approaching fundamental limits.  It is practically impossible to achieve a 10-fold efficiency improvement on a Volkswagen Polo BlueMotion or a Prius, at least not without paying a high penalty in price, complexity, comfort, useability and safety.

Therefore, the focus should not be on building greener cars but on using them smarter.  In my opinion, the lowest hanging fruit is city planning. A 10-fold decrease in energy consumption can be achieved by designing greener cities, and it doesn't require complex technology and resource depletion, just time and willpower.  Hong Kong is a good proof of concept; it's no secret why it spends an order of magnitude less energy per capita on transport than North American cities.

Unfortunately unlike car companies, cities are run by politicians, who have little stake in investing in long term improvements, but the problem will solve itself once the oil price hits $300. High energy cities will then start to become uncompetitive and lose population to low energy cities.

Here is a sobering "bigger picture" analysis of green cars:

http://www.withouthotair.com/download.html


PS. I ride a bike around town not because I'm a green hipster but because it's convenient and economical.

Volkswagen has nearly done it. No doubt there is room for improvement even on that model.

and i'll forget most of them like after watching it for the first or second time

why isn't that car available in America

The XL1 is going to go into production, but in a limited number. The sad thing is, if it went into mass production, I believe the production costs could come down. As for America, well:

- I always see posts (typically from Americans) stating the car is ugly. Idiots. People believe a car is ugly if it does not conform to what people expect a car to look like, which is defined by current trends.

- There's a big machine out there collectively called "automobile fashion and sexiness and the marketing of" which goes a long way to influence the way people think. Sad.

I'm an American, and that car is smexy. Looks future-cool, not ugly. I did a google search expecting some smart-car looking abortion of a vehicle, and when this beauty popped up:

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2011/01/lede-volkswagen-formula-xl1-concept.jpg

I was happily surprised. Unless we're looking at different vehicles?

That's the car. I like it. But I've seen a lot of negative comments about its looks. Which is too bad, because we need to evolve to point where form follows function.

This is what sci-fi has been telling me cars will look like in the future for decades. I'm glad we finally got here.

that type of high MPG would sell the car over it's ugliness

toyota echo is popular, pruis...