The most powerful electric car on earth
 

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Going to be an electric car in the pikes peak hill climb this year. Be interesting to see how it does as it won't be affected by the thin air.

oil companies need to be scared. Cars are going this way and there's nothing they can do about it.

If they were smart, they'd force the price of gas down to $2 per gallon, to delay the inevitable.

hm why do you need a gearbox in an electric car?

I was going to say "so the engine can shift gears" -- but now that I think about it, an electric engine with variable power would eliminate the need for gear shifting -- or am I wrong about that?

Why drop the price? Keep the price high and make record profits now, then as more people buy electric cars slowly drop the price.


Supply/demand=price

thats up to your goverment, not the oil company. 70% on you gas is taxes

Approx. 30% on average in Canada.

But don't let facts get in the way of your point.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_fuel_taxes_in_Canada

The same reason you need one in a gas car ir a bicycle - to keep the motor at an efficient (or powerful) RPM as the speed of the vehicle changes.

You have less need for very low gears because electric motors make max torque at 0 RPM. Also the gearing is a bit different because electric motors are most efficient at 50% RPM while gas is most efficient at 75%, but still you need gears to reach the correct RPM.

As soon as you find a way to make electricity magically appear out if thin air. For now, the most efficient way to make electricity on a large scale is - by burning fossil fuels.

Actually nuclear is a thousand times more efficient, but the US won't be building any nuclear stations any time soon. Wind will get you about three miles per day, so that's a joke.

Wrd. This going to turn into gas vs. electric like in the RC car world :)

it's just a matter of time before electric will be the majority.

For those curious about electric motor RPM and why gears are needed, a motor and a generator are basically the same thing. When a motor spins, it generates electricity backwards from the way the electricity from the battery is coming. So in other words, a motor being run at 6V acts as a generator producing -6V. That's why it can't go any faster than that max RPM - the negative voltage it generates depowers itself. So with 6V + -6V = 0 volts, the motor has basically no power at max RPM. On the other hand, a motor at 0 RPM obviously isn't moving the car. So you want to keep the motor RPM right in the middle of those two extremes, at half of max RPM.

Three are under construction right now.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=w1C44JQU7Pc

the Tesla Roadster is such a sexy car....damn

My one sentence comment on the nuclear outlook was overstated. For the first time in thirty years, some new plants have been approved. Currently nuclear provides less than 10% of our electricity needs. If those needs doubled by replacing gas with electric from some source, 95% of the electricity would have to come from fossil fuels. So nuclear isn't going to be a significant source of electricity for cars unless there's a major change in the politics of nuclear power.

Good explanation, thanks.

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Pretty slick vehicle.

Oil companies need to invest in something else and quickly - like batteries.

They have been. Not as much as you might think because unfortunately until there's a major scientific breakthrough, something as big as the discovery of nuclear power, large scale deployment of electric cars just doesn't work with the known laws of physics. We WISH we create electricity from nothing, but for large scale use fossil fuels and nuclear are the only reasonable ways to make that much power. Hydroelectric, for example can provide only about 7% of the power we use in our homes, not nearly though to also power our cars and trucks.

Hydrogen is very costly to produce and is only about as clean as petroleum - theoretically very clean, clean in a laboratory environment, but subject to the same issues that make peroleum burn in less than ideal ways in a real engine with 80,000 miles on it.

Nuclear obviously has the twin issues of dealing with a lot of low level waste and a small amount of high level waste. There's the political issue of people purposely confusing the two, making it appear to be a much bigger problem than it actually is. Do you foresee environmentally conscious people favoring nuclear power as a cleaner alternative to petroleum any time soon?

Everyone is looking at electric cars now, that is why gas prices are so high now cause they are trying to make as much money as they can before no one needs gas anymore.

I'm personally a big fan of nuclear energy.

Based on my limited understanding of the safety of current designs, nuclear seems to be the only physically workable option other than fossil fuels. I'm just not at all sure it's politically workable in the US. There are a lot of greenies who don't distinguish what would be nice versus actual reality. The reality is, for large scale production the only choices are fossil fuels and nuclear. I'm not sure enough voters live in reality,
though. For SO many, their thinking on all issues seems to be "I would like it if X were true, therefore X is true." Substitute "we can get all of our energy from seaweed" for X, and you see the problem. Same as "there are lots of billionaires to buy everything for me".