[baker1 (OP)]

anyone have any fresh ideas that might advance the electric car concept?
 

[Pumblechook]

Electric cars have too many snags. 

[Don_1]

Until electricity can be generated efficiently without the use of fossil fuels or nuclear reactors and stored in equally efficient batteries, I do not see electric powered transport as the answer to our problems  vis-à-vis CO₂ and pollution.

[teragram]

Don_1, "..... I do not see electric powered transport as the answer to our problems  vis-à-vis CO2 and pollution."

With the greatest respect, what is the answer?

[Bored chemist]

Fewer people?

[techmind]

anyone have any fresh ideas that might advance the electric car concept?

Probably the biggest problem is that the energy density of batteries (ie stored energy compared to weight and to size) is low compared to petroleum.
In other words, you have to have a big, heavy (and expensive) battery to get you very far. Carrying deadweight around decreases performance for stop-start driving, and increases the energy requirements to climb hills.

We then have the small issue of practical power-connection (charging) for people who don't have private garages or driveways. Drag cables across pavements and leave overnight?
No viable battery technology can recharge in the few minutes taken to refuel with petrol (and no present domestic supply could provide enough instantaneous power/current to do so anyway).


I'll leave it as an exercise for someone else to calculate the energy in Joules (then kilowatt-hours) in 45litres of premium unleaded, and then calculate how many hours it would take to pull that same amount of energy out of the domestic 240V electricity supply limited by a 60amp company fuse...

Needless to say, if everyone swapped to an electric car overnight, we'd need some major upgrades to our electricity distribution infrastructure one way or another. I think we'd more than double our electricity usage.

[Chemistry4me]

No one wants to invent a viable one because they'll get assassinated by some oil company hired hit-man...

[lyner]

It's much cheaper (and legal) to buy out inventors, actually. They are always doing it. When the time comes to jump, they'll all jump into the electrical pond - using the technology which they own already.

[LeeE]

The main thing that's holding back electric car technology is weight.  Then performance.

[Don_1]

Don_1, "..... I do not see electric powered transport as the answer to our problems  vis-à-vis CO2 and pollution."

With the greatest respect, what is the answer?

Fewer people?

Apart from BC's answer, I do not know. We need to travel less and supply our needs from our own locality. Since this is simply not possible in towns and cities such as London, New York, Paris etc. etc. we must continue to transport our requirements over great distances.

Go buy a pizza and look at the ingredients. Now think of where those ingredients came from; Wheat flour perhaps from America, tomatoes from Holland, sun dried tomatoes from Italy, olive oil from Greece, cheese from New Zealand, herbs from France, pineapple from Brazil, ham from Denmark, cardboard packaging from the UK and all put together in Germany.

How many thousands of miles has that pizza travelled???

This planet cannot sustain man's appetite.

[teragram]

"Electric cars have too many snags."  
"We then have the small issue of practical power-connection (charging) for people who don't have private garages or driveways. Drag cables across pavements and leave overnight?
No viable battery technology can recharge in the few minutes taken to refuel with petrol (and no present domestic supply could provide enough instantaneous power/current to do so anyway)."
"Needless to say, if everyone swapped to an electric car overnight, we'd need some major upgrades to our electricity distribution infrastructure one way or another. I think we'd more than double our electricity usage."
"The main thing that's holding back electric car technology is weight.  Then performance"   .........etc. etc.

So do we then just give up?, and admit that we cannot progress beyond the 19th century when it comes to transport technology?
I thought this was a science forum!!
Reading all this, the "fewer people" answer is the one we'll have to put up with.

[Pumblechook]

"So do we then just give up?"

How do you solve all the problems then?..  Wave a magic wand.

[lyner]

The charging time problem is far from intractable. I have a cordless drill with just two batteries. One charges whilst I am using the other and the system works on a continuous basis for all but the most intensive jobs. A third battery would cope with almost any circumstance.
A petrol station could be replaced by a battery swap station - no deliveries needed - just a whacking great mains supply cable and a vast number of  batteries on charge. The volume taken up would be somewhat more than the existing fuel storage tanks, of course, but change over would / could be quicker and a lot safer than pouring inflammable fuel all over your shoes instead of into your tank.

[DoctorBeaver]

30-odd years ago on Tomorrow's World they said we'd all be driving nuclear-powered cars by 2000  []

[lyner]

Raymond Baxter was a Sports commentator, wasn't he?

[graham.d]

You are all a bit negative I think. Electric cars do not necessarily mean batteries for a start. What about Hydrogen Fuel Cells for example? It is still an electric car with a relatively simple and efficient electric motor and it does not take longer to fill up with hydrogen than with petrol or diesel. London has a couple of Mercedes buses that work with such a design at the present time so it is a practical solution.

I can also say, from having tried out a Lexus hybrid for a couple of days, that even batteries, when combined with a petrol engine, certainly improve the fuel consumption. In the case of the Lexus, this was combined with very impressive performance too. It may not be wholly green, but it is certainly a step forward. I admit there wasn't too much room in the boot (trunk) though.

[teragram]

Thanks to graham.d for some common sense.
My next comments are these:-
My car can cover well over 700 miles on one “charge” (50litres).
This range capability is useful to me three or four times a year.
The majority of car journeys are I think within the range of even present day electric car technology.
We still are building and buying cars which can achieve ridiculously high maximum speeds (average speeds in U.K. towns are I think about 20m.p.h.) and are ridiculously heavy. Transport fuel demand could be reduced enormously (15-20%) by reducing trunk road speed limits from 70 (U.K.) to 50m.p.h., (be a lot safer to).
These are some of the points in response to “what could we do without new technology?”

The amount of energy in 45 litres of petrol is about 1,700MegaJoules, but the petrol engine converts about 1,200MegaJoules of that into waste heat, 500MegaJoules into motive power. Diesel engines are of course superior, but not astonishingly so.
If the motive power was supplied by electric motors, only about 170MegaJoules would be wasted,
In response to the original question:-

Electric motor technology is advancing encouragingly, see Siemens e-corner, Flightlink PML, (both in wheel motor technology, NO COMMENTS ABOUT UNSPRUNG WEIGHT PLEASE).
Battery technology also, see Altairnano in California (application of nanotechnology to battery development).
The possibility of motors such those above means that a car would have no gearbox and clutch (needed in conventional cars because the I.C. engine is so ill-matched to the load requirements) and no differential, all of which contribute to poor efficiency. They are perfectly suited to energy recovery on braking (not a fantastic amount unless you’re in a race, but useful)

I find all the negative attitudes to the need for drastic new methods of transport and energy to be extremely discouraging and I repeat "I thought this was a Science Forum"

[Pumblechook]

It is a science and engineering forum and not a science fiction forum.

Batteries.... You need at least a ten fold increase in energy stored per weight.  You need cheap safe and long life batteries.   
 
Unless domestic electricity supplies are beefed up by a factor of several times (very unlikley to happen) home charging will always be slow.  Even charging on an industrial scale will never be fast.  Battery swapping seems to be the only alternative and at current battery weight and bulk it is not really on.

People want  versatility..  They may do the same short journey day after day but they will want to go and see their granny etc etc now and again which involves an extra 10 miles.   A 50 mile range will mean you won't risk going more than 20 miles from home. 

Look at the G-wiz.  You have to take range figures etc with a bucket of salt. 

[yor_on]

In fact 'fewer people' is the viable answer:)
This is what we need to consider.

Any way, there are a lot of short term solutions energy wise:)
If we would 'permanent' them though the power(s) 'that be' would have to change.
As our society would change.

Less central control.
more diversification with lesser possibilities to 'supervise' us.
Unless we accept a 'police state'.
Which wouldn't surprise me:)

[LeeE]

One issue with batteries and fuel cells is that they store an enormous amount of energy and if they're damaged there's a risk of all that energy being released at once in an explosion.  This doesn't sound too different from the case with petrol but while petrol will burn it won't explode in atmospheric air.  It explodes in the cylinders but this is only after it is atomised and mixed with air in the right combination.  In this respect petrol is safer than batteries or fuel cells.

Hydrogen fuel, carried separately and used in a fuel cell type convertor, might be the best option.  As with petrol, Hydrogen won't explode in atmospheric air unless the mixture is right, although it will of course burn, but it's problematic stuff to carry around.  It's molecules, being so small, will leak out of fuel tanks very quickly unless they're made and maintained to a high standard.