GM, utility companies study electric car impact (CBC)

[Drew Wilson]

General Motors Corp. has joined with more than 30 utility companies across the U.S. to help work out electricity issues that will crop up when it rolls out new electric vehicles in a little more than two years.

The Detroit automaker said the partnership, which includes the Electric Vehicle Research Institute and large utilities such as Southern California Edison and Duke Energy Corp., will deal with issues from tax incentives for the vehicles to where and when they can be plugged in for recharging.

GM is working to bring the Chevrolet Volt rechargeable car to showrooms in late 2010. It's being designed to run on an electric motor powered by lithium-ion batteries. When fully charged, it will be able to go 64 kilometres on battery power. For longer trips, a small internal combustion engine will recharge the batteries to keep the Volt moving.

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You get to the last line in the last paragraph in the excerpt above and get all disappointed that it doesn't run exclusively on electricity. It's a start... a long... drawn out feet dragging endlessly stalled start... but a start. At the very least, make that engine run on Hydrogen!

[mountain_rage]

To be honest plug-in electric hybrids are genius. Whenever you introduce new technology you need something to bridge the gap, and these definitely fit the bill. There's also very few hydrogen gas stations in North America so making its secondary fuel source octane only makes sense. Now what I'm hoping is that they make the connector to the car have a identifier so people don't start stealing power, most electric cars use regular outlets.

[bnm01]

Now what I'm hoping is that they make the connector to the car have a identifier so people don't start stealing power, most electric cars use regular outlets.

Haha I never even thought about that...who knows if GM has either? They're more worried about whether they should use inductive charging which is slow but safe, or conventional outlets...

Maybe you would have to "activate" the car before it could be charged or discharged, such as pressing a switch in the interior.

[mountain_rage]

It probably wouldn't be as much of a problem in warmer climates, but everyone in Canada, parking lots, and businesses have plugs outside. So its guaranteed that power would be stolen if they used a conventional plug. They need to make it so the outlet has to get a key from the car before it start allowing power to flow, simple fix.

The other thing I was always wondering is how much they thought about potential gravitational energy when building these cars. If you live on the top of a hill in San Francisco and you commute to the bottom, will they keep track of that fact and only fill your batteries to 80%, or whatever required capacity? Otherwise you are loosing all that coasting energy.

[bnm01]

[QUOTE=mountain_rage;555355
The other thing I was always wondering is how much they thought about potential gravitational energy when building these cars. If you live on the top of a hill in San Francisco and you commute to the bottom, will they keep track of that fact and only fill your batteries to 80%, or whatever required capacity? Otherwise you are loosing all that coasting energy.[/QUOTE]

Hmm...again a good point =P
But with today's technology you wouldn't be able to recover much of that energy anyways. Faster charging batteries are coming out, but won't be in the first plug-ins. Ultra-capacitors are also in the works.

As for the power stealing problem you could just register your car as a credit card and have the outlet charge your number for the electricity you take.

[mountain_rage]

Well now I'm confused, I always thought hybrids stored the coasting energy from going downhill. Guess I should look into the technology further, just read short blurbs about it and filled in the blanks with my knowledge of theories.

[bnm01]

No, you are correct, hybrids do recover some of the energy from breaking. But what it recovers is very minuscule because today's batteries can't handle instantaneous recharges.

So basically what I was saying is that your hyrbid's not going to recover that much energy from breaking down a hill...so its not really worth implementing a system to charge your car to only 80% capacity.

[mountain_rage]

Even if its minuscule it must add up significantly to be giving back the mileage that hybrids get.

[bnm01]

I know my friend's Prius averages about 50 MPG. A good new car about the same size will average 35 MPG. So that 15 MPG comes from a combination of running only on the battery for start and stop action and slow driving, as well as regenerative braking.