Talk:Electric car

Article semiprotected for 3 days

Due to the back and forth edit warring, I have semiprotected for 3 days. I have also asked the IP editor to discuss the safety issues here on the talk page.

Other editors, please do not use the semiprotection as an excuse to avoid open and good faith discussions on the issue the anonymous IP has raised. Remember we assume good faith about all contributors. Thanks! Georgewilliamherbert (talk)

Vehicle-to-grid: uploading and grid buffering

The claim that battery cycling capability would need to be dramatically increased for V-to-G connections to be feasible is incorrect. Charging and discharging rates under such a plan would be well within the capabilities of the batteries in question and would not cause excessive wear and tear. Any claims to the contrary need to be supported with RS.

Need for diy section

Due to the increasing use of EV conversion kits and homemade/shop models this page needs a Section highlighting the modern Diy conversion/home made model being done all over the world. otherwise this article will no longer be relevant or neutral.

Purchase price

I found these statements curious:

American and British car buyers seem to be unwilling to pay more for an electric car... A survey taken by Nielsen for the Financial Times in 2010 showed that 65 percent of Americans and 76 percent of Britons are not willing to pay more for an electric car above the price of a conventional car.

This seems suspicious to me. This paragraph is talking about purchase price. The economics of electric vehicles involve paying more up front in exchange for lower operating costs (excluding battery replacement). I'm sure there are plenty of people who would pay more for an electric car if lower operating costs compensated for the price. So I tried the check the sources. The first two don't support the claim, the second is not a reliable source, and the third is unavailable. Kendall-K1 (talk) 02:16, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Can you be more precise in your complain. The article clearly separates content about purchase price and operating costs in two different sections, and indeed they do not compensate the premium you pay for an electric car. Check here for more details in the plug-in electric vehicle article, here and here.--Mariordo (talk) 02:24, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure I can be any more precise but I'll try. This statement:

American and British car buyers seem to be unwilling to pay more for an electric car

is not supported by the given sources. I suggest taking it out.

• The ibtimes citation supports: the battery costs are quite high (I moved the citation to the proper content it support). This ref is a bit dated (Set 2010), if you want I can look for more recent sources, surely there are plenty. Nobody questions that EVs and PEVs are more expensive to buy because of the cost of the batteries.

• Who kill the electric car site is not a reliable source, this is a site representing an advocacy group. I removed the ref.
• I move the text you point it and merge with the Nielsen/FT content, and expanded it to reflect what the FT article actually says.

This statement:

A survey taken by Nielsen for the Financial Times in 2010 showed that 65 percent of Americans and 76 percent of Britons are not willing to pay more for an electric car above the price of a conventional car.

is supported by an online source that is no longer available. I'd like to be able to verify it. Specifically, I'd like to verify that the survey is talking about purchase price, not total cost of ownership over some period of time/miles. Kendall-K1 (talk) 16:05, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

• The FT source is indeed available but only to registered users and subscribers (but still considered a reliable source). I do have access, and these results refer to buying the car, but to respect FT copyrights I will point to you to other sites summarizing/showing part of the relevant content. Check here and through Google here. I hope the ce + edits fulfill your concerns.--Mariordo (talk) 02:13, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

That's perfect, thanks! The extra JD Power material is a neat summary. Kendall-K1 (talk) 11:06, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Battery-less electric cars

Nowhere in the article is it mentioned that in theory, electric cars can be made without using any batteries whatsoever. This is useful as these pack a great amount of weight, need to be replaced after a few years and make up the bulk of the cost. Rather than using a battery, a range extender (ie microturbine, IC engine or Stirling engine) can be used. Especially microturbines (which are ?% more efficient than IC engines, ie regarding incineration) are very useful, as they are very light, and (as any range extender) allow to use energy dense fuels (more energy can be taken along compared to batteries). The only downsides of a fully battery-less system like this is that it may then be even more efficient to just use a microturbine powered by the fuel (as in the system proposed the microturbine needs to operate all the time anyway), and reducing output power (by reducing the fuel consumption) is also a problem. A intermediate system may thus be more efficient still, having only a small buffer (so storing say energy to drive a few hundred meters upto 1 km, rather than storing energy for say 100 - 500 km). This could be done by placing a (ultra)capacitor in between the microturbine (now fitted with a dynamo or alternator) and the electrical motor. Note that although one may perceive this setup as not that environmentally friendly (compared to electric vehicles which drive purely on their battery capacity), it actually is allot more environmentally friendly than most internal combustion and hybrid cars. This as: less batteries are required (environmentally polluting to produce), microturbines burn fuel more cleanly than IC engines, and finally, the fuel itself can be ie biofuel or a emissionless fuel (nitrous oxide, hydrogen, ...). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.182.6.232 (talk) 13:06, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Picture changed

To give more credit to EVs, I changed te picture to a picture of a charging Nissan Leaf. This picture is already used on the Electric Vehicles page and on the Dutch Wikipedia page on Electric cars. The picture depicts a typical EV (a smaller-sized city-car) with a neutral appearance. It clearly depicts the 'electric' part of the car (the car is charging via an electricity cable running from the car) and shows that charging stations are becoming more and more common.

There was some discussion about this in 2009, and I believe this picture meets al the criteria stated in this discussion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.98.16.41 (talk) 16:20, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Your change has a few problems:

• Your new picture looks like any old car parked next to a parking meter. Whereas the old picture had a bright yellow cable that just screams electric car!
• You ignored the comment that was meant to warn people to discuss any changes on the talk page first.
• You removed the comment that was meant to warn people to discuss any changes on the talk page first.
• New talk page topics go at the bottom of the page and should be signed by placing 4 tildes (~~~~) at the end.

I reverted your change. We've searched very hard to find a picture of a newer car but that yellow cable screams electric car so well that no better picture has been found yet. We're not against change but the change should be for the better.  Stepho  talk  08:47, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

As a reference, see previous discussion about changing the lead image here, and the initial discussion here. I still believe that a more modern and notable electric car (such as the Nissan Leaf) should be in the lead, but Steph-wrs has a very good point regarding the picture cannot be just any image, but one highlighting the fact that the vehicle is an electric car.--Mariordo (talk) 17:27, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

Silly claims from UCS

While UCS is often rather silly, it seems unnecessary to attribute ridiculous statements like "The study found that there are no regions in the U.S. where plug-in electric vehicles will have higher greenhouse gas emissions than the average new gasoline engine vehicle" to them. The average gasoline powered vehicle in the USA is somewhere between a truck and an SUV, both of which are far more capable in almost every sense than a typical EV. The reference {cite web|url=http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/clean_vehicles/electric-car-global-warming-emissions-report.pdf%7Ctitle=State of Charge: Electric Vehicles’ Global Warming Emissions and Fuel-Cost Savings across the United States|author=Don Anair and Amine Mahmassani|publisher=Union of Concerned Scientists|date=April 2012|accessdate=2012-04-16}} pp. 16-20. contains nothing relevant to emissions. Greglocock (talk) 04:44, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Ah, the ludicrous statement is made on p11 of that report. Oh well, if you put in the /correct/ ref then I suppose it can go back into this article and make it a posterboy for stupidity. Big clue, not every statement that is reffed is sensible, and that one is just risible. Greglocock (talk) 05:07, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining in detail your concern here. If you have done that before rushing to remove the content you might have realized that a wording change is enough to attend the issue you raise. If you had read carefully the rest of the summary of the UCS study, you might have realized that the scope of the study is electric cars versus hybrid and conventional gasoline-powered cars, with the Nissan Leaf as the baseline car. As made explicit in page 5 of the study, the comparison is against compact and midsize vehicles with average fuel economy of 27 and 26 mpg. Also in page 5, the study says "...even when charging an EV with electricity made only from coal (the dirtiest electricity source), the EV has better emissions than the average new compact gasoline vehicle." (the underline is mine). Also in page 11, mentioned by you, just before the conclusion is taking about the Hyundai Elantra and Ford Fiesta, and the average compact or midsize gasoline vehicles. So, the fact that the study authors used electric car and electric vehicle (EV) as synonyms as well as sucompact, compact or midsize vehicles when talking about passenger cars, can be fixed just by the proper wording, just like the rest of the summary of the UCS study. Based on pp. 5, I will change it to:

The study found that there are no regions in the U.S. where plug-in electric cars will have higher greenhouse gas emissions than the average new compact gasoline engine automobile, and the area with the dirtiest power supply produces CO₂ emissions equivalent to a gasoline-powered car rated 33 mpg_‑US (7.1 L/100 km; 40 mpg_‑imp).

If you still have any doubts, please check the entire comparison table in this other Wiki article here, under the heading "Well-to-wheel GHG emissions in the U.S." As you can see the dirtiest region (Denver) produces WTW emissions equivalent to 33 mpg-US, while the Chevrolet Cruze is rated 30 mpg. I really hope this settles the issue.--Mariordo (talk) 03:37, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

PS: and by the way, the EPA study, summarized right after the UCS study, just reconfirms these "silly/ridiculous" conclusions.--Mariordo (talk) 03:47, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

You misrepresent the actual sequence of events. I read the article, found the ludicrous claim, checked the ref as given in the article, and it was not there, so the ludicrous claim was unsupported, so I killed it. You then flounced in and replaced it /without checking the ref/. And here we are. The ludicrous claim was ludicrous as written, because, as is typical with POV-pushing lazy wiki editors, they ripped the quote from a report without giving context. Greglocock (talk) 06:18, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Omni wheel

If electric cars had omni wheel activation. Like if you built an omni wheel with rubber that can slide sideways, i bet people would by it. The omni-wheel is like a metal hubcap, or rotary axel with small vertical wheels lining the exterior or outside. If there is a way to lock the wheels in place at times, it would work. This would be the next step up to car evolution as opposed to the ridiculous science fiction hover car theory. You could even make traction with a type of rubber tubing.--Asfd777 (talk) 15:17, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Charging

Perhaps the wireless charging of electric vehicles in regular car parkings can be mentioned. See Pavol Bauer's documents at http://www.d-incert.nl/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Pavol-Bauer-Groningen-Presentatie.pdf Besides wireless stationary charging, it's also possible to charge a car while driving, on the road, hence allowing the use of a smaller battery. However, efficiency of this is not very great at present. A last option is charging vehicles with retractible power plugs retracted from parking spaces. 91.182.189.103 (talk) 14:19, 30 August 2012 (UTC)