Where Electric Vehicle Batteries Come From

The batteries found in electric vehicles are mainly based on lithium instead of the familiar old lead and sulfuric acid used in gasoline powered cars. The video shows how they are made.

Hydrogen Fuel Cells

A hydrogen fuel cell is able to combine hydrogen with oxygen from the air, producing electricity in the process. This electricity can be used to run an electric motor. Fuel cell technology allows to run vehicles off of hydrogen as a fuel instead of gasoline. As an important benefit, they produce water as the only byproduct of combustion between the oxygen and the hydrogen, which means no air pollution and no global warming boosting carbon dioxide.

The Marvelous Chicken Powered Car

How would you like to run your car on methane generated from chicken droppings? It can be done! The picture above is of exactly that!

Or, if you prefer to buy rather than do the conversion work yourself, you can buy a methane powered car from Fiat. The video shows one being fuelled.



And of course everybody knows that cow poo is a great source of methane!

300 Horsepower Electric Car

Electric cars and performance can go together. How about an electric 1972 Datsun beating a Corvette by a second over a second, not once but twice!? The secret is that an electric motor can generate maximum torque right from the start.

Propane Instead of Gas

Normal gasoline burning engines can be modified to allow them to take in propane as fuel. It is possible to run on a mixture of both propane and gasoline. The use of propane gives you extra flexibility; you can use more of whichever is cheaper or more available.

Run Your Diesel Truck on Grease

Diesel engines are quite capable of running on used cooking oil, grease and fat. This video documents extracting some used cooking grease from a standard grease trap behind a restaurant and pumping it directly into a diesel truck. Many people don't realize just how fuel versatile diesel engines can be. This video will sure open a few minds!

OneCAT Compressed Air Vehicle

Tata Motors is an India car manufacturer. They are the makers of the Tata Nano, one of the world's cheapest cars. They are also vigorously investigating fuel economy and alternative energy technologies that Detroit slumbered on until it is too late. It looks as though Tata Motors will be among the automakers of the future. It is doubtful that the US, once the undisputed leader of the automotive world, will have a place in that future unless Detroit proves capable of turning on a dime.

The OneCAT is a compressed air powered vehicle. It is small and light, thus automatically gaining a great deal of fuel efficiency. It runs on 200 liter tanks of compressed air. The vehicle has an onboard compressor. Plugged into a normal electrical outlet, the compressor can recharge the tanks with high pressure air in 4 hours. Future plans include a system of high pressure compressors deployed in filling stations which can recharge the tanks in a couple of minutes.

The OneCAT could be a perfect solution for local urban travel. Since it is not electric, it avoids the need for big heavy batteries. The savings on weight will give it yet more fuel economy.

The near future of consistently high gasoline prices will mean that populations enjoying widespread usage of gas sippers like the OneCAT will escape the nightmare of the gas pump.

Ford Fusion

The Fusion is a hybrid electric vehicle by Ford. It runs on a gasoline engine but has a battery and can run an electric motor off of it. It has regenerative braking to avoid the total loss of fuel when slowing down and stopping. I think one of its most interesting features is the advanced control panel, which shows you the exact state of the engine at all times. You can clearly see the mileage you are getting along with the contribution of the electric engine. This kind of situational fuel efficiency awareness is critically important to providing the feedback which allows people to improve their driving habits. And the driver is the most important factor of all for saving on gas.

Plug In Vehicle Tracker

If you want to know what types of electric cars are available and how many are out there, there is a website that can help. The plug in vehicle tracker has a list of the highway-capable electric vehicles under development or production broken down by manufacturer. The table has a column showing the "Target Intro" and "Progress" of each make. Most have a label saying they are only a prototype or that there is no planned mass production. However, one thing of note is that those that do have years of planned introduction almost always are being introduced into China and then Europe and then the United States. One more sign that in matters of energy and transport the United States is a backwards player.

Wind Powered Car in Action

We talked before about wind powered cars. Although there is no question that wind cannot be used to power the cars of today on the roadways we now have, there could be a place for land sailing vehicles in specific roles in the future. This video is just to show off the fact that it is possible to get around on land using nothing but the wind for power.

Fight For Your Right to Hang Laundry

What could be better than taking advantage of the energy the Sun freely provides to dry your clothes? But it seems that in today's wasteful world there are people that don't want to see clotheslines. To them clotheslines with hanging laundry symbolize a backwards, poverty stricken way of life. This is another perfect example of the lack of hypermiling culture in the US. The American population treats energy as though it is guaranteed to be cheap forever. But that is not true. We will be facing permanently higher energy prices in the near future and to deal with it we need to kick this "wasting energy is cool" mindset. Clothes drying in the wind under cost free sunlight are a great demonstration of self sufficiency and wise energy use.

Electric Car Logistics

Switching a significant portion of the national car fleet over to electric power will not be as easy as making the cars. Just manufacturing those millions of electric vehicles is a job in itself. The infrastructure needed to support them is also huge.

If everyone wanted to charge their vehicles at the same time no city's power grid could handle it. On trickle charge where everybody draws a little power at different times it could be possible. Arranging systems to support burst charges by everybody when they come home after the commute is another story. Also lacking is a national infrastructure of rapid recharge stations or battery swapping programs.

There are also political and economical issues. For example, if everybody wants to plug in at their employer's parking lot, who pays and how do you know how much? The infrastructure we have now, gas stations, makes it clear who pays and when. But if people can start plugging in anywhere there is an outlet that will change.

These are questions that we are going to be confronted with soon, judging by the steady increase in assembly lines turning out plug in hybrid vehicles and pure electric vehicles. The sooner we start to think about them and resolve them as a nation the easier the adoption of electric vehicles will be.

Solar Powered Cars

Although solar powered cars have been built, they are clearly not common. Why is this? Given that sunlight is a free source of power, why have solar powered cars not taken over the garages and highways of the world? The answer lies principally with power.

The rate at which an engine can provide energy is the power output of that engine. Usually automotive engine powers are measured in horsepower. A bog standard car engine will generally be able to generate 200 to 300 horsepower. The power output is a function of engine RPM for internal combustion engines and thus is not a constant specification of the engine. Now let us compare the power output available from solar. The Sun is of course putting out effectively infinite power, but we can only use the power that comes from light we can catch. Solar panels thus give a power output per area. Sunlight hitting a surface straight on delivers about 1000 Watts of power per square meter. Typical solar panels are about 20% efficient. So a solar panel of one square meter in area directly facing the Sun will generate about 200 Watts of power.

One horsepower is a little less than 750 Watts. Thus a typical one square meter solar panel in the optimum orientation relative to the Sun will generate about one quarter of a horsepower. A typical car will expose the most surface area to the Sun when the Sun is directly overhead, shining straight down on the roof of the car. Seen from above, a big car might be 18 feet long and 8 or so feet wide. That gives a surface of only about 13 or 14 square meters. Covering the entire surface of the car with solar panels would then generate about 3 horsepower.

Those 3 horsepower are when there are no clouds, the car is not in shadow and it is noon with the Sun directly overhead. You can see that there is no way solar power can deliver anywhere near the two or three hundred horsepower a gasoline powered internal combustion engine can. Solar power has a place in the future arsenal of silver BB energy solutions. But we are not going to see the cars of today run straight off of solar power!

High School Students Build a Solar Car

This video shows how a group of high school students build a solar powered car. Solar power is the ultimate in saving on gas. No gasoline used. No electricity used. The car they built looks like a box on wheels, but it uses 0.00 gallons per hundred miles travelled. It is impossible to beat that!

Tesla Motors Plans to Widen Product Line

Tesla Motors is planning to develop an electric family sedan and a fleet minivan. Tesla Motors is the maker of the Roadster, an all electric lithium battery sports car. There are about 700 Roadsters in use today. Tesla will be using a $350 million Department of Energy loan to finance the development process.

Tesla Motors is a new company. It looks like we will need new blood to pioneer the frontiers of fuel economy ... the old established automakers have shown much less interest in the future. We will see how Tesla goes. Although their technology is interesting, they have until now very little market penetration. 700 vehicles is an engineering proof of concept but I doubt it is convincing for a marketing executive. The new models, including the family sedan or model S, are to be produced at an unspecified future date. It is not even clear that the factories that will make them are under construction.

Right now we are still enjoying pretty cheap gas. According to gasbuddy the national average is around $2.50 per gallon. I think we will see an explosion in interest towards electric vehicles the next time the price gets above $4.00 per gallon. And that $4.00 per gallon gas will return.

Flex Fuel E85 Conversion Kit

Flex fuel vehicles can run on gasoline, ethanol or any mixture of the two. Using ethanol has its ups and downs which can be debated. But if you do want to try out a flex fuel vehicle and buying one is off the table, there are kits which you can install yourself to convert your existing vehicle. The White Lightning kit in the video and all the others I have heard of work by taking control over the electronics that run the fuel injection. Then the kit's computer adjusts the fuel air ratio according to the amount of ethanol present. They are easy to install. Go ahead and try it out if you have a mind to!

Run Your Diesel on Used French Fry Oil

Watch as the Mythbusters take used vegetable oil that had been frying up French Fries. Then they do nothing to this oil except filter it to remove chunks. Then they put it in a diesel car with a stock, unmodified engine. The car not only ran, but it got 3.33 GPHM! The same car with normal diesel fuel got a slightly better 3.00 GPHM. Don't believe it? Watch the video!

Thinking About Diesel

What are the differences between diesel and gasoline engines? Can these differences help us save on gas? Well, first of all, diesel engines have a higher thermodynamic efficiency. When they burn fuel, they convert a higher percentage of the energy available to useful work. Basically, all else being equal, they get more miles per gallon. However, to get these high efficiencies, they run at very high compression pressures. Because of this they need to be built strong, which makes them heavier. They are also more expensive to manufacture because of the strength requirements. Another feature is that diesels don't need electrical ignition systems, because the compression pressure is enough to cause the ignition. They need complex fuel injection systems though.

One interesting feature of diesels is that they can run on very low quality fuels. Even vegetable oil is enough to run them on. Try that with a gasoline powered car engine!

Futuristic gas sipper

We all know that one way to save on gas is to drive a car that gets better mileage per gallon. Case in point: the Feds are sure in love with that idea ... they want US automakers to improve fuel efficiency by 40% as soon as 2016. This will be a tough challenge for the automakers. We will see how it all works out. Meanwhile, on the home front, most of us just cannot go out and buy a newer fuel sipper. Unless you are rich, it is just not practical to change cars like you change socks.




Even though for most of us it is not an option, it is fun to see some of the new gas sipping concepts popping up nowadays. Take a look at this one: the 2010 MDI AIRPod. It is powered by compressed air. Although tiny, it holds three people. One person has to sit facing backwards. It can go 130 miles between "fill ups" and has a top speed of 40 mph. It carries an air compressor, so you can just plug it in to any outlet, wait 4 hours, and then you are filled up and good to go.

Here is what the manufacturer MDI has to say about the Airpod.