1940s electric car - GIF

[ToolTalkBot]

1940s electric car.




Previously:

1940s Frigidaire factories converted to wartime production
1940s German cigarette production line - GIF
1940s Hawaiian fishing rig - photo
1940s Opel Kapitan sedan - photo
1940s Slenderizing salon for women - video

[BuffaloJohn]

Gee - after all these years, refueling an electric car hasn't improved...

[mwmkravchenko]

Gee - after all these years, refueling an electric car hasn't improved...

Well that's not exactly true. You could charge the equivalent of that battery pack with a 100 amp 240 volt home charger in about 5 minutes.

It is amazing to me that some of the first cars were electric, the majority of the electric car companies that were successful were bought up and shuttered by companies that wanted to sell petrol or gasoline. And even now there are successful fear mongering campaigns out there to convince people how bad electric is. It's different. It's not unreliable. It's expensive because of lack of competition. If the Chinese electric automobile companies get to North America you can kiss the original 3 goodbye. And they will. It's already happening in Europe. Poor planning on the part of the industry and the government. Capitalism at it's finest.

Mark

[BuffaloJohn]

Well that's not exactly true. You could charge the equivalent of that battery pack with a 100 amp 240 volt home charger in about 5 minutes.

Here are the "standard" EV Charging Levels with approximate charging time for modern electric vehicles:

Level 1: Uses 120-volt AC electricity to charge (i.e., a standard household outlet) with an output of roughly 1 kilowatt. Takes days to charge.
Level 2: Uses 240-volt AC electricity to charge, with outputs generally between 6 and 19 kilowatts. Can charge an EV with a modest-size battery overnight.
Level 3/DC Fast-Charger: Uses 400- or 800-volt DC electricity to charge, with output ranging from 50 to 350 kilowatts. Can charge an EV's battery from 10 to 90 percent in as little as a half-hour.

The 24KW figure mentioned (240v x 100a) would be the high end of a Level 2 and half the low end of a Level 3. Level 3 fast chargers are rarely found in homes from what I read.

While it is true that batteries of yore had lower capacities, reality is that instead of comparing charging time for current chargers charging smaller batteries, we need to compare both doing a x% to y% or compare charging time for the same range for each.

It's different. It's not unreliable. It's expensive because of lack of competition.

Different - agree, so that makes comparisons important to be toward equivalent range/etc.

Not unreliable - disagree, too many battery fires in modern electric vehicles, very corrosive and deadly gases produced in combustion.

Expensive because lack of competition - disagree, they are expensive because they use lots of costly materials. One could argue that if there was more demand, the price might fall, however, despite years of government rebates, electric vehicles are not wanted by the consumer.

[mwmkravchenko]

Here are the "standard" EV Charging Levels with approximate charging time for modern electric vehicles:

Not unreliable - disagree, too many battery fires in modern electric vehicles, very corrosive and deadly gases produced in combustion.

Expensive because lack of competition - disagree, they are expensive because they use lots of costly materials. One could argue that if there was more demand, the price might fall, however, despite years of government rebates, electric vehicles are not wanted by the consumer.

Battery fires? You mean the sensationalized reports meant to scare people? I know that you are a reasoning man already from your other comments. TO say that petrol or gasoline vehicles don't burn is ludicrous. And when they burn they can also explode. It is true that there are some battery fires. But the percentages of fires is no higher than that from regular automobiles.

I'm in Canada and we get a lot of anti electric propaganda. One often cited report was of a brand new electric pickup that was taken on a trip and all the problems inherent in the vehicle. An inquisitive reporter tracked the trip route, showed how the report was for all intense purposes manufactured to be a failure and set up to create fear for lack of a more polite term. Who can take any vehicle running on anything from gas to diesel to chickens and drive without refueling and expect not to get to their destination? Or when in unfamiliar locals not take time to learn where to refuel?

My issue with electric is distance. I live in the countryside. When there's electric cars that are a reliable 400 miles on a tank like my current vehicle I will consider it. If I lived in the city I would have switched a few years ago.

Mark

[BuffaloJohn]

My experience comes from being responsible for power systems for man portable, fixed site, and vehicle mounted "systems" that needed battery power.

We had SLA, AGM, NiMH, and a bunch of Li flavors. Each had pros and cons, as anyone would expect.

With the Li batteries, we had more catastrophic failures but never once did we have a fire with a SLA, AGM, or NiMH battery.

I'd love to have electric to work in motive power - but I'm just going to need more convincing because of my prior experiences.