Nissan Motors car could double as house generator

[autogyro]

I think you answered the question for yourself flynfrog.
Vrrm vrrrm

[tok-tokkie]

There is an aspect of liquid fuels that I have not seen discussed but it seems extremely important to me.
It is pretty certain that we have used half the natural oil in the ground.
That has taken us less than 100 years.
The rate of consumption is increasing so the remainder will be gone long before 2100.
What is the feedstock to be for making plastics once the oil has been burned up?
We can use coal but it is not nearly as convenient.
I honestly believe that our grandchildren &, even more so, their children will hold us in contempt for just burning that natural resource.

[autogyro]

There is an aspect of liquid fuels that I have not seen discussed but it seems extremely important to me.
It is pretty certain that we have used half the natural oil in the ground.
That has taken us less than 100 years.
The rate of consumption is increasing so the remainder will be gone long before 2100.
What is the feedstock to be for making plastics once the oil has been burned up?
We can use coal but it is not nearly as convenient.
I honestly believe that our grandchildren &, even more so, their children will hold us in contempt for just burning that natural resource.

Good lord a sensible comment.
I thought the general opinion was to continue following the defunct 'dream' and greedily consume as much as we all can so as to become rich at any cost.
Whatever that means, never could understand it.
But then I have met lots of rich people but almost no rich happy people who were not forever watching their backs.

Sorry, the Nissan house generator is simply a marketing ploy to use the situation caused by Japans disasters to make money for the shareholders.
Surely at least that is obvious?

Typical low level exploitation.

[flynfrog]

I think you answered the question for yourself flynfrog.
Vrrm vrrrm

so you would like to use the threat of violence to take property to others to push your view upon the world?

How do you plan to get enough rare earth metals for all of these battery packs?

[jaxxtec]

Not sure about what actually would happen, but to me the most efficient solution would be a two seater electric motor, with a tiny generator and fuel tank limited to 80 kmph, opt-in auto driven by computers that can be rented rather than parked. kinda like taxis. they can then park themselves at 40kmph or so.

There needs to be less cars overall, and should last for longer, 50 years? since a standard car takes more energy to build than it will ever consume. practically we need 1 billion cars available all over the world to give everyone an average standard of living.

True it would be less fun, but it would be responsible and it is possible with present tech.

As for the leaf idea. Homes need to be redesigned to consume much less power (insulation, PV, etc) so that emergency sytem could be used efficiently, tho I would much rather depend on a trailer mounted generator for disaster areas. Even may be use old aeroplanes as temporary shelters, that can be landed on site almost the same day.

Going through how much F1 teams spend on development of systems, I would have thought they could solve all possible issues in 5 years. Edutainment as well. C'mon F1 switch to electric!

I can dream.

[autogyro]

I think you answered the question for yourself flynfrog.
Vrrm vrrrm

so you would like to use the threat of violence to take property to others to push your view upon the world?

How do you plan to get enough rare earth metals for all of these battery packs?

I cannot make sense of either sentence.
I am sorry if this is your logic it makes no sense to me.

[jon-mullen]

Although I agree in principle that there are inefficiencies in transporting all that fuel around the globe just to put it into a vehicle, you can't beat it for refueling time. I think we're all on the same page that hydrogen, like batteries or capacitors, is just an energy storage medium. The difference is that if there were hydrogen stations all over the place, I could drive a fuel cell car from here to, say... Austin ( ) and back and it would be practically the same experience as a trip in my current gasoline-burning ride. You can't say that about the Nissan Leaf, it would take what? a week? to do that.

Electricity is not an energy source.

I don't know exactly what you're taking issue with here, but I assume it's semantic...

EV technology is mature enough today to replace current vehicle motive power.
It has been used to drive trains for many years.
Technology on batteries and capacitors is developing at a rapid rate (electric traction is an area of revolution nothing less, a pity 'motor heads' close their minds like lemmings at every turn).

The point is that electric vehicles are possible today with todays available technology.

Are you so sure? For my ride back to my hometown, I drive ~600 miles, and I'm accustomed to doing it in under 10 hours. It's about 95% of the driving I do yearly. I'd really like to hear an explanation of a battery electric vehicle built with today's technology that could supplant even my POS car on this trip.

No matter how hypothetical you make it, it's not possible now and it won't be possible for a very long time. They simply cannot charge that fast or store that much energy. Quickly searching the interwebs, 22 kW is the fastest I see. That's (very roughly) 12-18 hours to get one tank's worth of energy. And then as flynfrog and jax point out there's the question of whether it would be any greener than a car that's already been produced.

If the electricity grids were invested in to provide the capacity and the 'smart' operation and sections of main road carriageways were converted for induction charging for vehicles to use on the move, no problems with EV range would exist.

Yeah, and if manna fell from heaven I'd never need to go to the grocery store. I've never understood why people think induction charging is a remote possibility, honestly. There's places all over the globe, including here and in Europe, I'm sure, where they can barely even lay asphalt correctly, much less charge a car through it.

[flynfrog]

I think you answered the question for yourself flynfrog.
Vrrm vrrrm

so you would like to use the threat of violence to take property to others to push your view upon the world?

How do you plan to get enough rare earth metals for all of these battery packs?

I cannot make sense of either sentence.
I am sorry if this is your logic it makes no sense to me.

you wish to take "oil barrons" money to build your battery utopia correct.


Batteries take rare earth mtls. even more rare than oil how do you plan to overcome this problem.

[autogyro]

you wish to take "oil barrons" money to build your battery utopia correct.


Batteries take rare earth mtls. even more rare than oil how do you plan to overcome this problem.

Rare earth elements are NOT rare, just expensive to extract at the moment.
Pay out just a fraction of the money spent on fossil fuel exploitation and there would no longer be any problems with batteries or motors.
The technology is already available and most of ongoing development in electric is moveing away from rare earths and towards better balance with the environment.

[autogyro]

Are you so sure? For my ride back to my hometown, I drive ~600 miles, and I'm accustomed to doing it in under 10 hours. It's about 95% of the driving I do yearly. I'd really like to hear an explanation of a battery electric vehicle built with today's technology that could supplant even my POS car on this trip.

No matter how hypothetical you make it, it's not possible now and it won't be possible for a very long time. They simply cannot charge that fast or store that much energy. Quickly searching the interwebs, 22 kW is the fastest I see. That's (very roughly) 12-18 hours to get one tank's worth of energy. And then as flynfrog and jax point out there's the question of whether it would be any greener than a car that's already been produced.

I can only humbly and with the greatest of respect for your life choices. suggest that you either move or work from home.
Of course, if your government paid just a tiny fraction of the money it gives to the oil and motor industry, to its electricity infra structure and built sections of motorway and main roads with induction charging for EVs, you would not have a problem driving 600 miles every five minutes.

[flynfrog]

Rare earth elements are NOT rare, just expensive to extract at the moment.
Pay out just a fraction of the money spent on fossil fuel exploitation and there would no longer be any problems with batteries or motors.
The technology is already available and most of ongoing development in electric is moveing away from rare earths and towards better balance with the environment.

the facts tend to disagree with you http://green.autoblog.com/2007/01/30/be ... k-lithium/

If it would only take a fraction of the oil money to build all of this cheap infrastructure why hasn't it been done yet?

[autogyro]

Here we go again.
How many thousand times will it have to be explained.
Lithium is NOT rare and neither are the other 'rare' earth elements.
They are simply spread around the earth more.

Now the main point.
When a battery or 'rare' earth magnet reaches the end of its working life,
guess what. The element is STILL THERE.It has NOT been converted to extra CO2 in the atmosphere or to cancer causing pollution.

Re-cyling of these chemicals is the FUTURE, not fossil fuels, they wont last long enough and will destroy the world economy through their increasing costs long before that anyway.

[jon-mullen]

I can only humbly and with the greatest of respect for your life choices. suggest that you either move or work from home.

Autogyro's solution to the energy crisis: don't visit your folks.

Lithium is NOT rare and neither are the other 'rare' earth elements.
They are simply spread around the earth more.

So it's just a clever name?!? I should've known. Those crafty capitalists obviously coined the term just to make it sound exclusive, like Polo or Airforceone.

[flynfrog]

you wish to take "oil barrons" money to build your battery utopia correct.


Batteries take rare earth mtls. even more rare than oil how do you plan to overcome this problem.

Rare earth elements are NOT rare, just expensive to extract at the moment.
Pay out just a fraction of the money spent on fossil fuel exploitation and there would no longer be any problems with batteries or motors.
The technology is already available and most of ongoing development in electric is moveing away from rare earths and towards better balance with the environment.

If the ROI was there im sure there would be truckloads of money pouring in.

So when smelting lithium there are no toxic gasses release?

We've been down this road before this is my last post in this thread.

[xxChrisxx]

As noone is looking at this in a balanced way, and ignoring the main points.

Autogyro is right that the majority of commuters could switch to an electric car without any problems, as the majority of car useage is short distance commuting into towns (which engines are horrible at).

Technically it's not an issue, commerically it is. With everyone (including governements and large oil companies) staring at the precipice of destitution, money is the big issue. As you can see from the Leaf, it's horribly expensive compared to an equivilant sized conventional car. Nissan haven't done this to be dicks, the technology is just that expensive.

What is proposed in the OP are alternative uses to make the effective cost of ownership lower. Everyone knows that the biggest problem with electricity production is storage when demand is low. The Leaf (and EVs in general) can be used as temporary storage that can balance demand. They are charged when demand (and therefore cost per unit to the consumer) is low, and the house can be run from the battery during during peak times.

This not only makes electricity cheaper for the user, but balances production demand.