The following is simply my thought about electric cars, pros and cons and some thoughts about design and what else I have gathered from my research. The Katharsisdrill digressive and amateurish kind of popular science.
It is a bit strange that I recently have put so much effort into understanding electric cars. I never had a driver's license, I never owned a car. As some of you know I have always just had a bicycle, which here in Copenhagen is the fastest and cheapest way of getting around (I'm a poor artists and every penny saved has been a penny I didn't have to earn from a day-job).
But I have read a lot about electric cars lately. One reason is that I am pretty sure we need to stop using fossil fuels, I do not claim to know what exactly will happen if we don't, but changing the composition of the atmosphere to pre-mammal levels just doesn't sounds safe... and I prefer cold weather to warm.
Another reason, and the most important is that I have introduced an electric car in my comic about Phill from GCHQ and as I am a obsessive researcher I have looked into the subject.
The fuel
What is the biggest problem with electric cars? The electric motor has been around for more than a hundred years and it is far superior to other kinds of motors. So the problem is the portable energy source. Simply put the electric car has the best motor, and a lousy energy supply, while a gasoline motor is a lousy inefficient engine, but has the best energy supply. Gasolin has a high energy density and it is easy to handle. It is also good for starting fires.
So how is science doing finding new battery types that can substitute the Ion-Lithium battery that is your best bet right now. Not very good actually. There is not much investment as nobody dares go into research that is not ready to capitalize. So as usual the market does not drive basic research, state financed universities are.
A lot of the potential of different battery types is already known, as it is basic chemistry we are dealing with, and the metal-air batteries are what draws attention. One of these, the aluminum-air battery, can almost compete with fossil fuels on energy density, it is potentially far cheaper than lithium-ion batteries as it does not depend on rare metals. Unlike metal-ion batteries, the metal-air batteries reacts directly with oxygen from the air saving a lot of weight and space.
But there are problems. The process causes corrosion of the anode, the aluminium simply disappears, and this short life of the battery works badly with the car-owner's demand for a rechargeable battery.
There are start-up, like this Israeli startup that envisions a future on Alu-Air, but many, many things have to be solved and many mistakes have to be made before that specific holy grail of technology is found (if ever).
The electric motor
The beauty of an electric car is really the simplicity. Instead of trying to make a camp-fire into a moving vehicle which takes one hell of a complicated engine, it is simple: Electric motor, Batteries, and maybe a compressor for braking.
Here's a guy who rebuild old cars into electric ones:
As is mentioned these cars are also much quieter, and the torc of the electric engine makes a a gearbox unnecessary. Then there's efficiancy. A gasoline motor uses at best 30% of the energy put into it on moving the vehicle forward, an electric engine uses 80%.
Design
So the electric car is already there, it uses lithium-ion batteries that are made in Asia with energy from coal-plants and that uses rare metals. They need a heating system to prolong the life of the batteries, and they still take a lot of energy to move around, and if that energy is made in a coal plant they are not completely clean. The particle and CO2 pollution has just been moved somewhere else. But in spite of these criticisms they do pollute a lot less all in all (the German car industry put out some reports last year, but they have been debunked). So what do they look like?
They look like a normal car. Heavy, ugly, taking up space in the cities and motorways. For all the simplicity and saved space they are mostly just the same old junk.
I think people should use bicycles in towns and cities. Bikes are healthier, uses less space, are easy to build and repair etc. But if I should decide what the electric car should look like in the future I would prefer it to be lightweight, compact, simple. So I'm one of those purists that do not appreciate noise and shiny lacquer? Yes, I am when it comes to transport, not when it comes to food, art and lap dance. Here are a two project I think are cool.
The Aptera is no more. You can read here how it all went to pieces, but it is one spiffy looking vehicle, three wheeled and as aerodynamic as is at all possible. Now the original creators seem to try to revive the project.
Danish e-bike manufacterors Biomega have made this prototype based on their experience with creating e-bicycles. It weighs only 950 kg (a low weight when you have to fit in the heavy ion-lithium batteries) it is made of carbon fiber reinforced plastic to hold the weight down, it has four electric motors of 82 horsepower and a top speed of 130 km / h. The range of a charge is up to 160 kilometers - not much but enough to traverse a large city. As of now it is only a concept, but it recently did win a design contest in Berlin.
I will try to write posts for the STEM community as often as I can come up with something to write about. I kind of sympathize with the idea of these sub-steem communities as I think specialisation will increase the quality of the posts.
