Same solution I use for my cordless power tools .. I have several batteries and swap ‘em.

There’s no technological reason that the battery packs couldn’t be swapped out by a certified technician at a “refilling” station .. or in my garage with the right hardware. (a “battery hoist”, a specialized charging station, etc.)

I agree otherwise – the energy density of hydrocarbons is significantly higher than that of today’s batteries.

It wouldn’t surprise me to see “batteries” replaced by some form of high-density capacitors in the future, the chemistry seems to indicate they’d do better .. but that’s just a guess, and the Leafs will all be rusting in scrapyards long before we get there.

Mew

his car, and I’ve read it gets something like 80 mpg. As I understand, he’s been trying show that an ordinary car’s mileage can be greatly improved. Also as I understand, carmakers haven’t taken him seriously.

The Leaf and the Volt are two entirely different vehicles. The Volt is basically a hybrid that functions as 100% electric while on battery, unlike the Prius that constantly switches from battery to gas to hybrid as you drive. On the other hand, the Leaf is a 100% electric vehicle. Nissan had to put more batteries in and give it more battery-mode range – because that’s the only thing that powers it! When the Volt runs out of electricity, it switches over to its combustion engine which both powers the car and charges the battery (but nowhere near as much as plugging it in).

So the weight difference you’re referring to is due to the Leaf not even HAVING a combustion engine – it just has an electric motor and a lot more batteries. The Volt has to carry both.

There are two things to consider in the electric/hybrid story: 1) A true comparison of mileage across all technologies – are cars with efficient gas or diesel engines a better choice for overall economy? and 2) There is a definite need for breakthrough battery technology, but that should be funded by consumer supply/demand and not by government intervention.

Battery technology development has been far slower than that of the technologies that USE batteries, and this is true of consumer electronics as well as cars. The company that breaks the code on energy storage may well be very successful…but only if other technologies such as fuel cells don’t succeed first.

How is it possible that you could have put all of that effort into writing this diary and not even understand at a basic, fundamental level how the Volt works? At the end of the day I guess that this diary is a real testament to just how poor a job, Chevrolet has done marketing the car.

-exits

I started looking at this some time ago, found it absurdly impossible to go all “green” and somewhat fits what problems you have here. I have yet to see anyone bother to get in to the exact details, you are welcome to try but I do not see any way of making up the difference…

The ultimate goal is to go all “green”, we want to change our cars to run on electricity (our government has already spent billions for a car battery) but to do this we need something green, wind and/or solar power. This seems to be a simple conversion, 746 watts equals one horsepower, and an average car is about 200 horsepower (some much more) or 149,200 watts. There are some 254,400,000 cars in the US or equivalent to 37,956,480,000,000 watts. Forgoing the math on conversion and transmission loss, and all the others factors how close is this lower horsepower come to equaling wind and/or solar power. Wind turbines run from 25,000 to 2,500,000 watts, using the middle number of that is 1,262,500. That would mean we need 30,064,539 windmills to equal the power output in our cars. There are 3,794,083 square miles (including water) in the US or a windmill planted every 8 miles, which is why the middle number is more realistic so we may have a chance of planting one of these in your back yard. Next, add in the service to households, there are about 130,000,000 households in the US, mostly with 100 amp service (with others having 200 or more amp service) or 12,000 watts each or over 1,560,000,000,000 watts total. Again, the lower number chosen for an example. Now we are up to 39,516,480,000,000 watts or 31,300,182 windmills or a windmill placed almost every tenth of a mile. The good news is that if we use the larger windmills they would only have to be placed every 6 miles but the bad news is the much larger sector, our industry and jobs also needs power. For photovoltaic solar panels, 125 square feet equals about 100 watts sunny day idealistically, realistically they only work half the day, we do have a cloudy day or two and have a notable conversion loss going from DC to AC, thus more realistically 50 watts. To produce the 39,516,480,000,000 watts service we have now we would need 3,543,646 square miles of solar panels out of the 3,794,083 square miles (including water) in the US. Again, this does not include our industry and jobs but there is good news, the government is only trying to mandate some of our energy to come from renewable resources such as wind and/or solar power for starters. In some states it is reportedly up to forty percent. The next step would be to add in our industry and jobs, then figure in averages and percentages, but there is simply no more space with wind and/or solar power, this proposed green economy would not fit. We have some choices to be made here on this path to “green” and they include extreme rationing of power and/or eliminating our industries and jobs. Steps such as simply changing a light bulb or other self imposed rationing cannot solve this problem, there is not enough there to make a difference. No nukes, no dames that hurt the fish, of course no oil equals back almost back to the Stone Age. Has anyone taken this math problem to the end, take the services we have now (not the idealist projections so often used but actual services we should be able to purchase) to the end result? Will we need to get out and push our cars uphill because they are so underpowered? Will we be limited to ten amps of service in our households? Will we have room to grow food?

Just like most of the other alternative energy solutions currently. Until we start thinking outside the box, we’ll be working inside the box with limited expensive boondoggles like the Volt and Leaf.

For example, they are actually working on energy transference through the air of at least 10 feet or more. They believe that they could embed this into the highways and be able to power cars as they drive along. This would eliminate the need for huge battery packs while not needing a gasoline engine.

I have also been reading that micro small reactors with Thorium instead of uranium could be built that would produce around 10kWh of electricity for decades. I’m betting that within the next decade we could start seeing these MSR’s cheap and safe enough to be built with new homes, which could not only power the home, but provide power back to the grid for other uses.

Our current problem is with the government funneling money to tech that are dead ends. I’d rather see a hands off approach with a level playing field where all laws apply equally to all business, and let them all compete on their merits. That one one of the big reasons why I liked Rick Perry so much, because it was what he believed in.

Is that they are all based on a healthy dose of neo-urbanist social engineering…

Yes, these are the same people who consider suburbs & exurbs to be ‘evil sprawl’, and claim the ‘proper’ life for a middle class family is to live in a condo or apartment, as if everywhere-USA was New York City…

The Volt was originally advertised as having a 40-mile plug-in range.

The logic behind it, for the O-admin & others, was that if you were a ‘Good’ American, who lived in the city within 20-30 city miles of their job, you could drive a Volt to work, charge it, and drive it home.

The problem? Americans don’t like to live like that – the first thing one does when they get enough money, is move the hell out of any place with a 6-figure-plus population…. We fight the social-engineering of HOV lanes, freeway deconstruction, and highway-funds-to-mass-transit diversion, to live in a place where the skyline is trees & blue sky…

For those of us who have more than a 30-miles-at-35mph commute, EVs are absurd.

You drive a comparable gas-only car 100 miles and tell me how much you spent on gasoline to make that happen, then drive a Leaf 100 miles and tell me how much you spent on electricity (offpeak KwH rate) to make THAT happen, and you will find an exponential savings.

Exponential!

And your 8-hour charge time is if you use a standard 120. If you use the recommended 240 its much quicker.

If you want clean energy go natural gas the technology is well developed clean and refueling is a 10 minute job. Electricity is compound inefficiency the generator ,battery and motor are each lucky to deliver 80% of the energy put in them.

Anyone’s who’s had to swap out their car’s battery knows about all the “environmental cleanup/recycling” fees required. Can you imagine how much it will cost to recycle a 400 lb battery? Besides the fact that the Rare Earth elements needed are only mined in China because of the wide-scale pollution involved with their production… with current technology, pushing electric cars is just outsourcing pollution to the backyards of peasants ruled by dictators.

Designers are working to create electrified roadways that do not require physical contact between car and road. These would only need to be spaced every few miles and would allow for recharging while driving at highway speeds. This technology is already being used to operate an amusement park vehicle train (the type that is used to pick up park patrons from distant parking lots) This vehicle is able to operate all day without having to stop for recharging. While the technology is just being developed, it makes a lot more sense than using current battery technology and subsidizing this wasteful approach.

As an earlier poster showed, using wind power is not going to work. But it would not take very many nuclear power plants to supply the energy needed for electric car use and new nuclear designs are very safe (unlike older designs)

formerly known as General Motors (GM) will sell 12,000 Chevy Volts to GE (General Electric), another 0bama crony-capitalist favorite.

GE is forcing employees who have company cars to use the Volt as their replacements. Employees who decide to opt-out, will not be re-imbursed for their expenses. GE will offer estimates for electric vehicle charging stations and will be re-imbursed for home charging costs, and retain original gas re-imbursement costs.
GE manufactures electric vehicle charging stations. So, they could sell as many as 12,000 EV chargers. GE officials claim that the changeover to Chevy Volts will save the company money in the long run.
The current subsidy is $7,500 per car.
That comes to a total cost to the taxpayers of $90,000,000.
Whoa! Guess we need to start working longer hours to pay this off.