Discussion Electric Vehicles - The Way of the Future?

FYI I've converted an FZR250 to electric and very happy with the results although I'm relatively new to motorcycling its only used as a commuter and a bit of weekend fun (not racing). Like most projects it's never ending, just upgraded the battery to get more range and will probably upgrade the speed controller sometime next year. Max speed is 110kmh and range is 150-200km. Some photos and links to more info if you're interested.

https://www.2fiftycc.com/index.php?threads/fzr250-conversion-to-electric.10307/
https://forums.aeva.asn.au/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=5957

 

@Frankster as much as I think the EV tax win is a great example of a win for the little folk, there needs to be a mechanism for EV drivers to contribute to road infrastructure. Which is what I thought the fuel excise was all about. Ultimately, this is likely to just result in electricity prices being pushed up further to cover the lost revenue from the fuel excise. So everyone bears the cost regardless of whether you drive or not. Does not seem particularly fair to me.

 

Wow. I fully appreciate and understand time issue, but hadn't appreciated that, in a real commercial environment, that fuel/energy costs would be over double for the electric vehicle!!!!
I guess we still have a bit to learn here in Australia.

 

nah. electricity has... pitfalls. too many.

a battery charging is no more than an electroplating process. you are pulling ions out of solution in an electrolyte and forming a metallic coating.
on discharge, you then dissolve that surface back into solution.

periodic table paints a simple picture... lithium is one of the most reactive metals we have. we basically dont have any other metal that can happily decompose so readily. batteries are a stupid way of storing energy.

jacobs law? anyone familiar with how the load and the source resistances interact?

how about some basic physics, 1/2mv^2? its the same thing...

if the source, generator, is the same resistance as the load... the energy appears equally in both, and is dissipated as heat in the resistance of both equally. you need really big generators, with super low resistances with heaps of power in reserve, to drive a small electric motor at the claimed ":efficiency ratings".

you plug a motor into the mains supply, and it may be its claimed "80% efficient". the overall system... 80% efficient...

plug a resistive heater in, and the actual resistor itself is 100% efficient at producing heat from the power applied... your pesky 2.4kw heater is nothing compared to that 25MW powerstation, the super low resistance of the grid with its virtually "infinite" power... so the system is very very close to 100% efficiency OVERALL.

but plug that same motor into a small generator, inverter, battery supply... with a relatively high internal resistance... and where does the HEAT develop? are you doing work at the generator making heat in the WINDINGS, or in the LOAD?

you plug the heater in, and its still 100% efficient. yay, we can still claim the motor is 80% efficient as well!

but the overall system? with the source taken into consideration?

half the power is being wasted in the battery as heat as it discharges, or half the energy is in the generator as heat, etc...


when you charge a battery, how much of the power applied appears as heat through I2R losses, and how much is put into the basic electroplating process? how about the state of the metal you are plating?

how does that batteries internal resistance affect jacobs law and the generator when its charging? THIS IS A MAJOR ISSUE with ANY "off-grid" system... a battery does NOT follow ohms law when its charging. or discharging... (if you actually think about this, and how it relates to say, charging voltages vesus ideal loads that a generator will tolerate, you may start to see lightbulbs going off...)

all copper is produced by electroplating, as is aluminium... on a massive scale... very carefully controlled currents to produce high quality solid metal, with the minimum of I2R loss...

and as for the ICE?


i personally feel that its still no more than a steam engine with spark plugs on it. we havent gotten past certain inherent defects of the crank and conrod assembly.

im not saying rotary is any way out of the fundamental issues, either.

take the mechanical effort, versus work... we spin it over tdc, and the crank gives us a mechanical advantage.

but that compression then has to produce work... and at TDC it has no mechanical advantage AT ALL. (desaxe, anyone?)

naw, it needs the maximum pressure of combustion to act TANGENTIALLY. you want it to be the inverse of whats currently happening.

we are stuck in this rut of the so called "otto cycle", which is really the "beau de rochas cycle"... and using a converted steam engine to perform the function.


all engines run on air and heat. not fuel. this hurts our heads, but its true. an engine is an air compressor, heats the air up via the process of combustion, and returns more work than it takes to compress a quantity of air. every 249C returns twice the work.

a steam engine heats its working fluid up with fire, in a boiler, suffers thermal transfer issues, radiation losses, and phase change losses...
a stirling engine heats a working fluid via heat exchangers, and suffers thermal transfer issues, radiation losses...

youre typical ice... think... for 50kw at the shaft, with a 33% efficiency... the other 2/3rds of your energy from burning that fuel went out the exhaust and the radiator...

that exhaust note we love? its power being WASTED.

turbo chargers are a way to reclaim some of that heat energy form the exhaust, but we still shoot ourselves in the foot with the archaic steam engine based technology, stuck in the rut thinking...


engines are not designed or have never been developed to maximise the full potential of whats possible. they have been designed to be manufactured and SOLD in large quantities. to change EVERYTHING is a major risk. and im not talking about the mere swap to electric. thats just... short sighted ignorance, to chase that route. it seriously is. i mean a company that say, makes an engine that doesnt follow the traditional "otto"(beau de rochas!) cycle... theyre engineers have all been trained to think only of the engines they were trained on. they arent teh only mechanism.

a scotchyoke is no better, neither is the swashplate. none of this opposed piston or achates or duke engine nonsense. its all been done before, a century ago... check out "michel opposed piston swashplate", etc...

they all follow the same inherent design flaw of the suck squeeze bang blow idea... lousy mechanical efficiency. terrible. woeful.

atkinson was sort of there but toyota made a complete abomination of the whole concept, missed the whole point... stuck in the rut, stuck in the rut...

we need to rethink how we use energy, our mechanisms. what heat is...

i have my little ideas, my little work arounds... but im a lazy bastard so i just leave things on the shelf to gather dust, half completed.

on that note... anyone in sydney got like an old 2-3L 4 cylinder and wants to do an experiment? gotta sign a non-disclosure first im not giving away what i plan on doing out in public!


this modern age relies on ignorance, and so called "education" that is actually training to simply RECITE rather than THINK. that isnt "intelligence".

thats the issue when everythings driven by profit rather than life satisfaction. i laugh at you suckers killing yourselves to just "live"... working that job, taking the kids to all those courses, events, buying presents, celebrating nonsensical meaningless days, talking trivial nonsensical babble about nothing much in particular... haircuts... clothes... who slapped who in whose face... big fat engines in new supercars that are nothing but teh same old same old, reciting figures, facts, so many kw, so many newton metres, but its all just meaningless BS really... still just a glorified air compressor bumping around on a set of rubber donuts... poop poop goes mr toad of toad hall, poop poop!