VRT on electric, hybrid and flex-fuel vehicles to be reduced by 50% for 2007

probe

If you think electric cars are too slow for your lifestyle – check out the Fétish!

Acceleration: 0-100 km/h <5 sec
Range: 250 km
Top speed: 160 km/h

Cost of “filling the tank” with electricity: €3 in France, €4.50 in rip-off un-competitive ESB controlled Ireland
About half that if you charge it up at night using cheap rate electricity.
1 hr to recharge at full power
Carbon fibre body
L-ion battery lasts about 250,000 km.
180 kW motor! (Typical 1.8 litre petrol car is about 85 kW). No gears to change – just put your foot down and silently zoom away.
If you charge up with Airtricity – no CO2 or any other pollutants on your mind.

Price? Who knows – they don’t have dealers in Ireland yet! But it won't be cheap! (though significantly cheaper than a Bugatti*).

It does show the potential of electric vehicles. It is not so long ago that the bread and milk etc were delivered in electric vans and the trash was collected in electric trucks. Yes. In Ireland! The country is going backwards.....

http://www.venturifetish.fr/?lang=en

.probe

*probably the most un-environmentally friendly cars in the world...
http://www.bugatti-cars.de

736 kW engine
960 g/km CO2 emissions
0-100 km/h 2.5 sec
urban fuel consumption: 40 l/100km!!!!
Top speed 407 km/h

luapenak

although at the moment i would hardly see the advantage to the environment of an electric car. Once most of the power is generated by fossil fuels its just as bad as a regular car. I know you say airtricity , but i mean only so many people can use that. I dont think that by buying your electricity from windturbines is relieving the reliance on fossil fuels unless there is huge investment in wind energy or nuclear or whatever. I mean if you lived in France these would be great for the environment or had you own wind turbine. Also wind turbines are not wide spread across the country so this idea cuts most people out.
I think once the main sources of electricity isn't fossil fuels, electric vehicles will become a great idea.
I think that one of the huge problems is the idea that cars should be used at all (for short distance travel). The amount of people who drive less than a mile to the shops just to bye the paper or similar distances to schools is crazy. Even if the there were no energy concerns or global warming or anything cars are not the way to travel short distances. I think people need to move away from using cars over short distance as it just cloggs up the roads, which will never be good enough to hold us all.
Even the amount of people who get the bus just a few miles across the city is stupid. Just buy a bike. Although saying that, it is becoming increasingly more uncomfortable to travel by foot or bike to the quailty of the air one breath due to cars and house fires and all that.

probe

luapenak wrote:

although at the moment i would hardly see the advantage to the environment of an electric car.

It is quite easy to charge your car with green electricity – just change your electricity supplier. Get the company you work with to change theirs too and put a few power points in the car park for employees to charge their electric cars. Most public car parks in the town I live in have charging sockets for electric cars and they get free parking too! Support shopping malls that have green energy recharge points in their car parks.

Electric cars and green energy are a great combination because they can store energy “when the wind is blowing”. The green energy companies could have a special tariff and smart metering to encourage this. When you get home, you could run your house off the electric car battery during peak energy demand periods – again if the ESB morons had smart meters that varied the electricity price depending on time of day, so that electricity is expensive during peak consumption periods.

This concept also applies to fuel cell cars – even more so. Electricity is turned into hydrogen “when the wind is blowing”. A car hydrogen fuel cell is a massive battery – one car could power five to ten houses.

Nothing will happen until the carbon obsessed ESB is replaced by a forward looking energy distribution infrastructure with a mandate to eliminate carbon from the system, in stages over say a 20 year period.

People would then know where they stood, and the signals would be there for investors to take appropriate decisions.

.probe

Celticfire

Most public car parks in the town I live in have charging sockets for electric cars and they get free parking too! Support shopping malls that have green energy recharge points in their car parks.

What town do you live in?

netman

297000 euro + VAT ?!?!?! :eek: :eek: :eek:

Cuauhtemoc

VRT on electric, hybrid and flex-fuel vehicles to be reduced by 50% for 2007

Don't suppose diesel cars that will run on bio-diesel or veggie oil will qualify for this ??

probe

Celticfire wrote:

What town do you live in?

A small, well managed, GREEN, town near the Mediterranean.

The powers that be in the town have recently bought land in a neighbouring jurisdiction and planted trees to suck up the CO2 produced in the town. All the electricity we use in the town comes from either thermal conversion of our rubbish or hydro. Most of the energy from the rubbish goes directly into the heating and air con for the area I live in - i.e. water at 95C and 5C is piped from the conversion centre to each house and apartment where heat exchangers create air con or heat. It also supplies hot water. Low energy loss / high conversion efficiency as a result. The rest of the rubbish, and wood waste from the forest / timber industry is converted into electricity. There are no landfills. 100% of waste is recycled - either into other products or energy. Even wine bottle corks are collected and recycled separately and the money used for cancer research.

Rubbish has been thermally converted for 20 years right in the middle of the town, and there have been no health problems – it is at the top of the world health organization rankings for health. Products made from chlorine are not thermally treated to eliminate the dioxin risk.

There are about 25 hydro power generation facilities in the vicinity. Virtually every little river and mountain stream produces electricity.

.probe

probe

netman wrote:

297000 euro + VAT ?!?!?! :eek: :eek: :eek:

Any car that can go from 0 to 100 km/h in 4 seconds or so will be expensive.

The petrol powered Bugatti costs €1 million!!! And generates almost 1kg of CO2 per km driven in urban areas.

Venturi also has electric cars from around €20,000.

Electric cars (battery or fuel cell) are like pharmaceuticals or software - high capital cost to "invent". Low production costs. No complicated engines. No gearboxes. An electric motor driving the wheels. Want to go into reverse - just change the polarity of the electricity feeding the motor. Simple.

What we need is volume production to drive down prices.

We won't get that while the politicians and the EU MONSTER (cartel) put so many obstacles in the way of people who want to upgrade their mode of personal travel to a greener alternative ....

.probe

probe

Cuauhtemoc wrote:

Don't suppose diesel cars that will run on bio-diesel or veggie oil will qualify for this ??

It seems to me that they are only talking about E85 fuel (15% mineral gasoline and 85% bio). Perhaps an oversight?

Call your local TD and ask him to find out. Perhaps he can persuade them to include bio-diesel / vegetable oil in the final version of the Act?

.probe

enda1

probe wrote:

Electric cars (battery or fuel cell) are like pharmaceuticals or software - high capital cost to "invent". Low production costs. No complicated engines. No gearboxes. An electric motor driving the wheels. Want to go into reverse - just change the polarity of the electricity feeding the motor. Simple.

What we need is volume production to drive down prices.

Em fuel cells plus hydrogen storage is really expensive in its current form. Expensive raw materials not just development. Batteries likewise 250 odd kgs of Li-ion is going to cost a pretty penny.

luapenak

probe wrote:

No gearboxes.
.probe

How boring.Wasnt there just a campaign to make people aware that being tires at the wheel is dangerous. They would have to give us something to be occupieds with. Even if i was fully awake an automatic car with put me asleep

Celticfire

probe wrote:

A small, well managed, GREEN, town near the Mediterranean.

The powers that be in the town have recently bought land in a neighbouring jurisdiction and planted trees to suck up the CO2 produced in the town. All the electricity we use in the town comes from either thermal conversion of our rubbish or hydro. Most of the energy from the rubbish goes directly into the heating and air con for the area I live in - i.e. water at 95C and 5C is piped from the conversion centre to each house and apartment where heat exchangers create air con or heat. It also supplies hot water. Low energy loss / high conversion efficiency as a result. The rest of the rubbish, and wood waste from the forest / timber industry is converted into electricity. There are no landfills. 100% of waste is recycled - either into other products or energy. Even wine bottle corks are collected and recycled separately and the money used for cancer research.

Rubbish has been thermally converted for 20 years right in the middle of the town, and there have been no health problems – it is at the top of the world health organization rankings for health. Products made from chlorine are not thermally treated to eliminate the dioxin risk.

There are about 25 hydro power generation facilities in the vicinity. Virtually every little river and mountain stream produces electricity.

.probe

Sounds like a green utopia. You still haven't given me the name of the town or even what country it is in.

probe

luapenak wrote:

How boring.Wasnt there just a campaign to make people aware that being tires at the wheel is dangerous. They would have to give us something to be occupieds with. Even if i was fully awake an automatic car with put me asleep

People don’t get tired because they don’t have to change gears!

They do get tired from inadequate or poor quality sleep or the consumption of alcohol or drugs and/or work stress. Nothing to do with changing gears. On a long motorway journey in any type of vehicle one seldom has to change gear even once.

The only reason I brought the issue up is to point out that an electric motor can be so much more powerful than an internal combustion engine. A good example being a large duplex (double deck) TGV train in France travelling at 350 km/h carrying the equivalent of two Jumbo jets of passengers in quiet, smooth comfort with zero turbulence in any weather.


.probe

PDD

Id be interested in knowing the name of this beacon of eco-living.

Capt'n Midnight

luapenak wrote:

How boring.Wasnt there just a campaign to make people aware that being tired at the wheel is dangerous. They would have to give us something to be occupieds with. Even if i was fully awake an automatic car with put me asleep

piston engine steam cars don't have gearboxes either for similar reasons.

probe

enda1 wrote:

Em fuel cells plus hydrogen storage is really expensive in its current form. Expensive raw materials not just development. Batteries likewise 250 odd kgs of Li-ion is going to cost a pretty penny.

It is only a matter of time before these problems are eliminated. All new technologies are expensive before they reach maturity and mass market prices.

BMW has a 7 series hydrogen car – which can also run on gasoline (because of the current shortage of hydrogen filling stations). I suspect that they are well on the road to dealing with the hydrogen storage issue in the vehicle.

It seems to me that most alternative energy technologies will follow a dispersed architecture. We used to have mainframe computers costing millions each – now we have networks of inexpensive PCs and servers that can achieve far more in terms of computing power per € invested.

The energy supply chain will evolve similarly. Oil wells, oil tankers, large scale refineries, and conventional filling stations will become less important in the energy supply equation. Next generation filling stations will start off with power connections for electric cars to re-charge. This will be good for business because the motorist will have to spend time eating and / or shopping in the service area during long distance journeys, while his battery re-charges. (Power for short distance travel will be sourced at home, at work, in the shopping mall, etc). (Make him take the hopefully by then electric train next time).

There won’t be a huge hydrogen storage requirement for hydrogen at filling stations, because this will be produced on site – a process which consumes large amounts of electricity. In Ireland, this will force the government to facilitate the proliferation of green electric energy generation (wind, wave, tidal, etc), and break the ESB monopoly dogma, which caps green energy to minimize competition for the fossilized ESB. This will force them to cut their huge workforce (most of whom earn two to three times the European average remuneration, for similar employment). In many cases we will probably end up with farmer Murphy with a few windmills on his land selling his output to Paddy O’Toole who owns the local motorway service area 1km down the road – which the latter will probably supplement with purchases from the national grid from other sources (offshore wind, imported wind energy, etc).

Batteries in electric cars today are economically viable. A L-ion battery for a sports car is a specialty product that costs money – just as a 4 litre petrol engine that can do 0-100 in 4,5 secs.

Every technology has a similar story. Take the copper phone line – which remains in monopoly hands in Ireland, where eircom controls 95% of local loops providing broadband.

The copper phone line used to be able to support a single telegraph connection – with a data transmission speed about 2 or 3 characters per second. It cost probably a day’s pay to send a 10 word telegram and you had to hop on your bicycle and travel several km to the local post office to send one.

Subsequently the same copper pair became capable of transmitting voice.

After that came the fax machine which only arrived in wide scale use in the early 1980s.

In the late 1980s, a dial-up modem working at 2,400 was hot (a lot better than the 300 bps job you had to put up with a few years earlier).

Shortly followed by ISDN offering data rates of 64k or 128k or whatever multiple thereof you were willing to pay for, usually by the minute.

DSL arrives around 1995 (not in “head in the sand” Ireland of course, for another 7 or 8 years).

My (non eircom) ADSL2+ line today gives me about 18 Mbits/sec down and just over 1 M/bits/sec up (I live a good distance from the RSU). If I lived closer it would approach 28 Mbits/sec.

All using the same basic copper pair phone line technology.

Ireland has to take its head out of the sand, and seriously make use of the abundant green energy resources it fortunately has.

It could be a trend-setter in this area – in the same way as the smoking ban has been copied in many other European countries – Italy, Spain, France, etc.

The country has the financial and natural resources to do the job. If the current EU has any shred left in its corporate being of the objectives of its founders, it will support any initiatives taken by IRL.

Anyway, Ireland has no excuse for not doing the honourable thing environmentally and showing the way for others….. which means making the country green energy electric car friendly for starters.


.probe

SeanW

The problem with these green energies is that they rely on the weather and need backup. That has implications for any application.

PDD

.probe I like your enthusiasim and thinking (mostly coz its outside the box) but we live in a bannana republic cocooned in own vested micro-interests the sad reality is that something has to become a political football or hot patatoe near election time for anything to change. Wether you believe the above is synical or not all you have to do is look at this this governments actions thus far to see its appauling track record when it comes to any green issues. Things that spring to mind are a license for an incinerator in Duleek, the denial of planning permission for the a ethanol refinery at the Mallow sugar beet plant and the subsequent selling off off the land to a local property developer, the change in legislation to allow wind turbine plans to be pushed through regardless of local objections.

While this country may have the "financial and natural resources to do the job" it doesnt have the political will and I personally doubt that it ever will either. Ireland is a perennial underachiever as a nation, sure we have high points in some areas but as a whole were a nation who will settle for mediocrity content to grumble into our pints.

Capt'n Midnight

probe wrote:

BMW has a 7 series hydrogen car – which can also run on gasoline (because of the current shortage of hydrogen filling stations). I suspect that they are well on the road to dealing with the hydrogen storage issue in the vehicle.

Make no mistake, once someone finds a way to store electricity in a form as convenient as fossil fuel the internal combustion engine is history for most transport uses.

The problem is the physics and chemistry.
Liquid hydrogen has a density 1/10 of that of water and 1/8 that of petrol , so you need massive fuel tanks. You then need insulation for them ( no point in worrying about crash proofing them as the insulation needed to keep fuel losses lower that 1% a week should be enough.)
Gaseous Hydrogen, needs to be under high pressure to store any resonable amount of it, 0.09g/L means at 200 Bar (2,800 Lb / square inch) a 55L fuel tank would hold just 1Kg of the stuff,

Chemistry
you can bind with another element but it takes energy to release the hydrogen afterwards
LiH 1/8 of the weight is Hydrogen - lots of energy and Li is better used as batteries ?
most of the other low molecular weigh hydrides are poisonous or inert or spontaneously inflamable or corrosive or expensive. The higher molecular ones have too low a power density to consider.
Carbon compounds are good eg: methane ( natural gas ) 1/4 of the weight is hydrogen, other carbon compounds can release hydrogen if you burn them with reduced oxygen (reforming) - fuel cells to use carbon compounds directly are available but not at the energy density desirable yet.

Hydrogen as a fuel for transport is a non starter, except for applications where it's light weight overrides the storage and transport problems. You get this in two places, Space flight - and here it's mostly on upper stages and where fuel evaporation is not a problem due to the extremely short storage time ( minutes once you stop the constant topping up ) or with airships where volume is not a problem, some airships used a mixture of neutrally boyant gases some lighter and some heavier than air to run the engines - meant there was no ballast problems.

Hydrogen as an intermediate in between chemical storage and electrical generation is a technology that could be adopted easily until something better comes along. Also you can make producer gas (mostly hydrogen) from any carbon fuel - like domestic waste - and water. You can store hydrogen as methanol or methane or actlyene or ethanol or other simple carbon compound that is liquid or easily liquified.

You can generate hydrogen in the tropics using photovoltic or from some algae that break down water or a power tower or some such and then pipe it anywhere you like, just like natural gas. You can even pipe it directly to the service station. But it's not much use there because you can't store it in a car without severe penalties in range / weight / volume.

Sarsfield

I have to agree with Capt'n Midnight about hydrogen as a transportation fuel.

Reading The Hype About Hydrogen convinced me.

Issues with production, distibution & storage (and their associated costs) mean hydrogen won't be running our transport system for many decades, if ever.

For a start, until there is an excess of green electricity, it is much better used replacing dirty power plants than producing hydrogen.

probe

In every area of science you come across “con merchants” who write papers and books to promote their career, or sell books, or both, peddling their “insights” one way or another. While I am not implying that the author of any particular paper or book or posting on the topic is motivated in this way, in any area of knowledge some people take snapshots of current or out dated thinking and turn them into “fact”, some of which manage to be turned into “media events”. For each of these professional con merchants, you have thousands, perhaps millions, whose mindset is stuck in the present or the past. History proves that technology moves on, knowledge of materials improves, etc. The current state of the art storage of hydrogen is at 700 bar, and they are working towards 1,000 bar – greatly increasing the energy compressibility factor. Advances are also being made in the materials being used to make hydrogen storage tanks to minimise leakage and maximise safety. Science is in a constant state of change and improvement.

I see hydrogen or methane or Lithium Ion or ultracapacitors as nothing more than a means of portable energy storage. The common denominator is electricity. They will drive an electric motor in the car, and will require electricity in the conversion and delivery process. I am totally agnostic on which medium is the best.

Widespread adoption of these technologies will make renewable energy sources more viable, because they will offer short term, dispersed storage of massive quantities of electricity which can be used for personal transportation, in the home, and for grid backup, when deployed on a widespread basis – using the electricity supply grid as a two way street, end to end. The household car becoming an energy storage device for the national grid.

There is no alternative in the long term. It is similar to the way that mainframe and mini-computers were made obsolete by the network and PCs/servers.

Availability of energy will be the most important competitive advantage in any economy going into the future. Ireland has access to more cost effective renewable energy within its territorial limits than any other country in the EU, per capita.

Unfortunately the mindset of the country is in a state of paralysis when it comes to innovation in energy and transportation matters!

.probe

Capt'n Midnight

probe wrote:

The current state of the art storage of hydrogen is at 700 bar, and they are working towards 1,000 bar – greatly increasing the energy compressibility factor. Advances are also being made in the materials being used to make hydrogen storage tanks to minimise leakage and maximise safety. Science is in a constant state of change and improvement.

At 1000Bar a 55L fuel tank would hold just 5Kg of the stuff.
Any weights on the 800/1000Bar tank
Any indication of the thickness of the insulation as this makes the tank thicker too.

While Science and technology is in a constant state of change and improvement the laws of themodynamics don't change. It's impossible to make a 250hp electric motor 5% more efficient because under optimum loads they'll convert over 95% of the electricity to mechanical energy.

And when you get to high power generators http://www3.toshiba.co.jp/power/english/thermal/service/generators/men02/efficiency.htm

Ex.6 : 800MVA water-cooled generator, Efficiency 98.93%
arrow Stator rewinding
Fan and End Shield Replacement
800MVA water cooled-generator, Efficiency 99.01%

Unless you run them in vacuum or change the copper to silver (to get more current through rather than reduce the heat losses) there isn't a whole lot of scope for a break through - except on the size / cost front and even then you could save a lot more weight on the energy storage mechanism for far less cost.

I see hydrogen or methane or Lithium Ion or ultracapacitors as nothing more than a means of portable energy storage. The common denominator is electricity. They will drive an electric motor in the car, and will require electricity in the conversion and delivery process. I am totally agnostic on which medium is the best.

gotta agree - though I doubt it will be native hydrogen.

Widespread adoption of these technologies will make renewable energy sources more viable, because they will offer short term, dispersed storage of massive quantities of electricity which can be used for personal transportation, in the home, and for grid backup, when deployed on a widespread basis – using the electricity supply grid as a two way street, end to end. The household car becoming an energy storage device for the national grid.

Won't happen. Pumped storage wipes most ways of storing electricty , on cost, on efficiency, on maintainance costs, as long as you have water and mountains within reach. (Flywheels are great - but not energy dense enough and you have to keep them topped up - for use as UPS's 1% of the energy goes into the wheel and all the wheel does is give you enough time to start the generators)

You would be lucky to get more than 60% of the energy supplied by the national grid to the back into the grid again. Mostly the energy lost in converting chemical<-->electrical. Also since you have to charge the car again later there is another inefficiency.
Unless you were storing the energy in the car as flywheel energy, in which case you don't loose so much energy feeding it into the mains, and besides the flywheel would spin down otherwise.

Just like humans the future car may use several types of energy.
Flywheel / Battery / Fuel cell / Gassifier / easily liquified gas / liquid or pelleted fuel
http://www.brianmac.demon.co.uk/energy.htm

Duration Classification Energy Supplied By
1 to 4 seconds Anaerobic ATP (in muscles)
4 to 20 seconds Anaerobic ATP + PC
20 to 45 seconds Anaerobic ATP + PC + Muscle glycogen
45 to 120 seconds Anaerobic, Lactic Muscle glycogen
120 to 240 seconds Aerobic + Anaerobic Muscle glycogen + lactic acid
240 to 600 seconds Aerobic Muscle glycogen + fatty acids
...
Exercise for longer periods requires the complete oxidation of carbohydrates or free fatty acids in the mitochondria. The carbohydrate store will last approx. 90 minutes and the free fatty store will last several days.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/healthy_living/fitness/energy_fuel.shtml

Anaerobic
- The high power system - this provides energy for a 90-second power burst.
...
the body can only store a limited amount at a time - a person weighing 70kg (11 stone) will store around 450g, or 1,700 kcal, of glycogen

luapenak

probe wrote:

. Nothing to do with changing gears. On a long motorway journey in any type of vehicle one seldom has to change gear even once..probe

And motorway joourneys are extremely boring

probe

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

Won't happen. Pumped storage wipes most ways of storing electricty , on cost, on efficiency, on maintainance costs, as long as you have water and mountains within reach. (Flywheels are great - but not energy dense enough and you have to keep them topped up - for use as UPS's 1% of the energy goes into the wheel and all the wheel does is give you enough time to start the generators)

You would be lucky to get more than 60% of the energy supplied by the national grid to the back into the grid again. Mostly the energy lost in converting chemical<-->electrical. Also since you have to charge the car again later there is another inefficiency.
Unless you were storing the energy in the car as flywheel energy, in which case you don't loose so much energy feeding it into the mains, and besides the flywheel would spin down otherwise.

If you are concerned about energy loss, look at the compounding losses diagram in p76 of http://www.sciam.com/media/pdf/Lovinsforweb.pdf
80% of the energy gets lost in a conventional coal power generation plant and in the electricity network combined.

At least with renewables, you can adopt technology abuse strategies (ie installing far more windmills at sea than is required to supply a nation) - exporting and storing the surplus. Storage of energy in cars has a low cost because it is essentially free of capital cost - the motorist pays for the car for its transportation value, and just needs an incentive on electricity rates to participate in grid storage.

It seems to me that the energy loses of a wind to car to grid cycle will be at least as competitive as the present state of affairs where carbon sources are turned into electricity and transmitted over long distances to the end user.

.probe