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Subject: Electric Car bombs
PPR    3/3/2011 11:11:23 PM
"http://green.autoblog.com/2011/03/01/gm-sells-281-chevy-volts-february-nissan-67-leafs/" Gosh, why would so few people want to buy what is basically a $40,000 economy car that can only go 70 under real world conditions?
 
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buzzard       3/4/2011 8:50:20 AM
The Trabant of our era.
 
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CJH       3/20/2011 3:28:12 PM
I have read assertions to the effect that much of the "green" technology that Obama wants the taxpayer to generously subsidize is outmoded.
It sounds as if the considerations behind this are far more of a political (campaign contributors standing to gain financially) nature than purely technological.
 
The general idea is that money needs to be directly to R&D into more promising technology rather than appropriation of 30-40 year old technology.
 
What ever happened to research into nuclear fusion?
 
What ever happened to applying gas turbine technology? If it's good enough for the M1A1 Abrahms maybe it could replace truck engines. The drop in maintenance costs and the simplification in design could yield a lot of benefits.
 
What about research into high temperature superconductors (improving the efficiency of motors and generators thus decreasing overall energy consumption)?
 
What about research into improved batteries and supercapacitors?
 
With large capacity batteries/capacitors plus high efficiency motor/generators, could not hybridized gas turbine engines be a practical possibility since an apparent major drawback of turbines is the narrow range of practical engine speed? That is the hybrid add-on (energy storing/retrieving transmission) could accomodate a truck's(/car's) operating at a wide range of speeds to the requirement that a turbine run at a constant optimal speed.
 
What about photovoltaic technology improvements?
 
What about the idea of an orbital solar photovoltaic array beaming microwave energy to the earth's surface?
 
What about the potential of geo-thermal energy capture?
 
 
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YelliChink       3/20/2011 4:14:48 PM

The Trabant of our era.

That made my day. Thank you buzzard.
 
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buzzard       3/21/2011 9:25:05 AM
I have read assertions to the effect that much of the "green" technology that Obama wants the taxpayer to generously subsidize is outmoded.
It sounds as if the considerations behind this are far more of a political (campaign contributors standing to gain financially) nature than purely technological.
 
Of course it is political. It's a matter of people pursuing rent seeking applications. You have a harder time selling a possibility of something good rather than something half baked in your hand. Politicians like to have something to attach their name to, no matter if it is a boondoggle (John Murtha Airport anyone?).

The wind and solar companies can produce something now, and as such they can seek subsidies now. 
 
The general idea is that money needs to be directly to R&D into more promising technology rather than appropriation of 30-40 year old technology.
 
That would be nice. I won't hold my breath. No politician ever cares about the long term. It is the very nature of politics to not give a rat's patootie about what happens once they have retired and stopped running for office. Now granted the political dinosaurs do have a tendency to live far too long occupying an office the whole time, but still 30 years is way past their attention span.
 
What ever happened to research into nuclear fusion?
 
Still puttering along. Their are some significant engineering hurdles.
 
What ever happened to applying gas turbine technology? If it's good enough for the M1A1 Abrahms maybe it could replace truck engines. The drop in maintenance costs and the simplification in design could yield a lot of benefits.
 
Considering how bad the M1s reputation as a fuel hog happens to be, I'm not sure this is a worthwhile pursuit. In theory gas turbines should be plenty more efficient, but I suspect they don't scale down so well. There are also edge case considerations (start up and shut down).
 
What about research into high temperature superconductors (improving the efficiency of motors and generators thus decreasing overall energy consumption)?
 
Research continues in this area (I'm a bit distant from this loop, but I suppose I could ask someone I know). This, IMO, is probably about the most promising possibility out there in a lot of ways. While it doesn't have that much to do with energy generation, it does have huge implications in energy storage. In theory you can store a pretty good amount of current in a loop of a superconductor, and that will be basically lossless. It could make for the ultimate batteries if you can get them to a high enough superconducting temperature.

The key aspect of this technology is raising the superconducting temperature. The maximum for high temperature superconductors at the moment is still pretty  low (135K or 164K under pressure). Of course that is Kelvin, so subtract 273 to get your Celsius value.

Now to put a further damper on any excitement here, the really important temperature is actually half the superconducting temperature. You see, once you get above about half the absolute superc
 
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