Changing to Electric Vehicles

Oh Dear.

Reading through some sections of my last post, it might seem to some readers (especially those who’ve wandered in from BetterPlace) that I have some criticism of the carwash type battswap system they’ve thought up. On no, not so.

It’s a good system and I’m sure it would work. Until new batteries come along.

I have to say that it restricts itself to one car maker who designs their car with the space and contacts and slides and holding clips etc:.

You are NOT going to get all the car designers to design their idea of a car around a fixed design battery box. The universal petrol input socket I mentioned in my previous post of July 14th 2008  “you’ll never get all …”, will not happen again.
I wish I were wrong.
It is also just uncommon sense to realise that batteries are going to get smaller

So that the current sized battery boxes are going to need to get smaller and all the carwash type battswap installations will have to be altered and so on.
The worst part is that the batteries are not going to improve until there’s a huge demand for EVs, and this demand needs some kind of battswap system to make it work.
So it’s a kind of damned if you do and damned if you don’t situation .  Hmmm.

What is going to have to be watched is the financial and otherwise control of the battswap and electronic network capers.
It’s all very well for Shai Agassi to say that he hopes that other companies will copy his system, but if these BetterPlace stations are already on every corner or added into every service station, there will
not be much room for newbies.
Australia, indeed the world’s transport, will end up under the same Mega control as the oils barons have got.
The same as Telstra now has.
The same as Coles and Woolworths now have. ad nauseum.

Currently, it’s the Oil Barons
Soon it will be the Battery Barons
Come on World, GET REAL 
You don’t really think, you are surely not so naive as to think that the world controllers out there would let an opportunity like that pass them by?
Think on this:  The billion cars on the planet will all be EVs, powered by batteries. So who owns the battery companies?
Will the Oil Barons buy in? I would, wouldn’t you?

Sorry folks, I was just fantasising for a moment. Where was I?
In Australia in 2009 we’ve got Mitsubishi stating that they will have their MiEV on the market circa 2011. They certainly won’t retool their factory to change their cars to use the BetterPlace system.
Then there’s the energetique people in Armidale with their superb Mazda 2 based ‘evMe’  machine (evMe.com.au).
This machine leaves the Mitsubishi for dead in most ways including that it’s all-Australian.
They wouldn’t/couldn’t redesign the whole car to fit in with the BetterPlace concept either.
I pause for a moment to point out that if my own EV, the Daewoo, were fitted with lithium batteries, it would be equal in performance to both of these space machines.
And it’s for sale for only $20k. and it’s available NOW.

However, these two are the only EV makers that seem to be market ready (by 2011) and once they start selling (and they’ll sell thousands straight away), it will be repetitive of Bannister’s 4-minute mile………
all the other car makers will rush whatever they’ve got onto the market licketysplit, or immediately, whichever comes sooner.

Straight away, all production of ICE vehicles will stop-exactly like production of the black vinyl records stopped when CDs came along..
The public will not buy last era’s old fashioned stuff when they have it proven to them that

             the era of the electric vehicle has arrived.

Another thing to be watched, is that this new EV caper is not turned into a kissy kissy red carpet turn out where all involved are showing the fans how clever and modern and ultra they are.
The everyday car owner of 2009 does NOT turn left when he gets onto a Jumbo jet, he turns right and joins all the hoi polloi down the back where he thinks he belongs (which is why he’s there).
He’s not going to be interested in high-priced architects’ shiny baubles. He will only change to an EV if it’s pretty much like his old ICE car and it’s cheaper to buy and cheaper to run. Never mind about stuffing up the atmosphere (climate). He only says he cares about that ’cause that’s the latest cool, trendy thing that everybody’s saying.

          If changing to an electric vehicle is any harder than picking
                     up his TV remote control, forget it.

OK, here’s an in-yer-face-reality-check.

On the 15th May 2009 I made the 40 minute drive up to my local
council head office-a multi million dollar edifice of some import.

I showed an officer there the printed downloads and explained about the Melbourne to Brisbane electronic highway planned by BP, and it went like this:

First of all, realise the distances. Melbourne to Sydney is about 900 kms depending on if you go via expressways, and Sydney to Brisbane is about 1200 kms.
Next, the main truck route from Melbourne to Sydney is north through the cities of Albury, Yass and Goulburn. You would not take the coast route ’cause the coast towns are sea change little sea resorts.
You take that route if you’re a grey nomad and just wandering along.

Now, car drivers travel on the main highways.
So the current service stations are on the main highways, and any proposed battswap stations would have to be on the main highway too. Makes sense to me.
But excuse me, all the good spots were taken and built on decades ago. There’s nothing left. Woops.

OK, so you might be a good wheeler-dealer and you find some more spots to build new battswap stations.
The council official told me that you don’t just go in and build anything you want. Firstly you need council approval which includes all sorts of environmental studies, traffic flow, neighbouring businesses, waste disposal and so on.
I was advised it could take at least 6 months if all went smoothly
Then you’ve got to start building…..
BUT IF YOU JUST ADDED ONTO AN EXISTING SERVICE STATION, IT MIGHT TAKE ONLY TWO MONTHS.

I suggest that you would need as many battswap stations as there are old fashioned petrol service stations. I’m taking a very wild guess, but there must be hundreds of service stations over this Melbourne to Brisbane 2100 km route. It must also be realised that these service stations cannot be removed or replaced because this is a major trucking route with just hundreds of trucks every week and they use diesel and it will be decades before they will all be replaced by battery driven trucks. Oh deary me.

SO WHAT’S THE ALTERNATIVE?   Well let’s have a look at what’s been happening in the past…..

Was it 40 years ago or even longer, that in Australia stations did not have super or standard ie: different grades of petrol. What you got was different brands such as BP, Shell, Golden Fleece and others and there were several pumps in a row each with its own maker’s brand and you chose whichever brand “you knew” was the best. It was rumored that it all came out of the same refinery and some ’special’ additive was poured into the tanker’s top at the refinery gates on the way out !

Then the stations went one brand and you went into the station that served ‘your’ brand, then each brand started marketing super and standard to suit (they said) the new high octane cars.
Then standard was changed to unleaded to avoid the lead in standard poisoning the atmosphere (this was before it was called “the climate”).
But then LPG came on the market exactly the same way as EVs will come on the market. There were a few and then more and more. The stations didn’t freak out, They just added an LPG pump with the special type of connection that LPG cars need.
So then E10 appeared to save the climate and it was cheaper and wouldn’t deplete the Earth’s oil reserves, but it was ‘proven’ to be bad for engines, and stations advertised that their petrol didn’t have E10 in it.
So they were marketing super and unleaded and E10.

Now in 2009, probably because of the world finance and people tightening their belts, unleaded is disappearing and it’s now called (and advertised as) unleaded E10.
So is this the same E10 that was proven to be ‘not good’ and damaging to car engines?
I point out that E10 was always unleaded. Maybe it wouldn’t be nice to keep referring to it as E10 because drivers ‘who care’ don’t like putting E10 in their car and they would be asking what’s happened to unleaded.
They’d certainly be asking something anyway.
I hope.

The point is that the oil industry play silly buggers with their petrol/gasoline and meet the market as long as they’re making a buck. Makes sense.
At the moment, it’s just with their own (oil based) products.
Will they let the battswap boys in?
Let’s have a look at what else they’re doing…
Many of the stations are huge, too big really to sell just oil products.
It made financial sense to allow Hungry Jacks and Maccas, KFC and Krispy Kreme to come in
Many of the stations have auto car wash bays. These could be changed over to battswap stations.
In years to come, when batteries are the size of a loaf of bread, and battswap stations are no longer required, drivers could go into the drive-through where the order clerk would say: 
“That’s two Whoppers, a chocolate shake and three recharged batteries.
“Would you like fries with that?”

So why the bloody hell would you build new stuff when you can start up your new car business where the cars go anyway? …and don’t forget, you don’t have to pay for all the service station infrastructure, you know, the toilets, the chocolates, the chips, the acid soft drinks and other diabetics’ health foods.

Of COURSE the oil barons would let the battswap boys in.
As long as there’s a sensible dollar in it.
YOU would, WOULDN’T you?

My good old aussie neighbour next door, Hermie Goldburg
says HE would and boy, does HE know how to save a dollar! 
He doesn’t even buy his wife a present at Xmas time!

My next post will be: Polioticians and the electric car.
You won’t believe

So the year is about 2020 (probably not before), and we’ve got many thousands of EVs out into the market, we’ve got the equal amount of old fashioned petrol cars (some of them only a couple of years old) into the metal recyclers, and now all we’ve got to do is to arrange a daily battery recharge or at least a charge every couple of days whatever our lifestyle travelling requires.
Trouble is, some of the new EV owners live in home units (condos) and just can’t run an extension cord out of their window ’cause they live on the 4th floor. You know what I mean.
Millions of cars (out of the one billion that exist) around the world are just parked out in the street.

Quite often, it is not possible to ‘just install’ a power point on the unit block garage or carport.
So there’s nowhere to recharge the EV. Oh Dear.
The petrol/service stations might not be too happy about installing EV recharge power points.
That would be akin to asking Satan if you could put a crucifix on his dining table to keep the flies away.
In early 2009, they are regarded as the deadly enemy to electric vehiclers.
We are on full attack mode to destroy them. Well, I am ..I own an all electric car..do YOU? if not, why not?

I’ve mentioned in other posts about adding recharge services to the existing petrol pumps, if only
to ease the financial ruin that these places will otherwise face.
Trouble is in 2009, it still takes too many hours to fully recharge if you’ve already done a day’s
driving, and anymore than 30 minutes is too long to take out of anybody’s busy schedule.
So recharging at the old fashioned petrol station would probably not be viable.
As for recharging or ‘topping up’ while you shop in any Australian Mall. You can just forget it.
It would be against the deepest Australian way of life.
It’s ok for Canada and the northern US states, where it’s a matter of winter survival but in Aussie, it’s asking for the general population to move in and set themselves up for life.
Free power?! Great!! Crocodile Dundee would love it.

I visited the Manager of my local shopping mall (Lakeside Mall, Charmhaven).
Pretty big place, perhaps 1000 car spaces.
I told them the story of my EV-that I visit the Mall 4 times week and what about a power point being installed in a reserved spot somewhere.
I was asked “what’s an electric vehicle and er, no but I could email you a PC print out of where PPs are around the car areas that the cleaners and maintenance people plug into”. They never did.
Anyway, the chance of finding an empty car spot near one of these p.ps would be rare. You could put up a ‘reserved for EVs’ sign, but in Australia the life mission of a sign is to be ignored.
Like: “please do not lean your golf clubs against this sign” and bus stop signs are to indicate that you can park there as long as you like provided only that you leave your hazard lights blinking.
“I’ll only be there for a minute” and “to hell with the bus” thinks the would-be parker.

In 2009 an EV needs several hours of recharging on a permanent basis. I know, I own one.
Forget the generator scene. They’re too big, and you can’t have a lawn mower engine revving inside your little EV and it will need exhaust venting. It was one of my fantasies and I looked at it and it’s just not on.
Even the quietened camping gens are too noisy inside a small car. A new one costs circa $4000.
You can also forget the solar panel scene. That was another fantasy mentioned in a previous post.
To recharge your EV you need to plug it into your nearest power station. No ifs, no buts.

If you use the excellent BP network when it becomes available, that will be great,  but you will in effect be plugging into your nearest power station, and that’s no problem.

ReGens on the wheel hubs are a help but are useless on a freeway trip. They are also expensive.

So the bottom line of recharging EVs is that unless you’ve got your own house or a strong reliable situation at work, it’s going to be a no-no for the general car owner.
We are talking about one BILLION cars.

I see the battswap method as the only safe ultra-reliable no nonsense way to go.

Yeh, have a recharge thing set up if you can, just like you keep a can of petrol in the car boot/trunk or your home shed but for the general life-style, it’s going to have to be battswap.

So let’s open up that can of worms:

THE CARS THEMSELVES
Shai Agassi’s Better Place web site shows an excellent system of a car pulling into a car bay, having the large battery box in the car removed from underneath by a hoist.
The car then moves along the bay just like in a carwash and a new/recharged battery is lifted up into the car’s battery bay and the car moves off. It’s great, it’s logical. We need it.
I suggest that this is a first draft idea. The heavy battery box would not have to be handled by a human, it would not be affected by any weather conditions and so on.
It reminds me of the first efforts of the mobile/cell phone applications.
Remember the ‘brickphone’?
The bulky battery, the (now) old fashioned handset and all those things from that past era.

This will definately change. Already the five years from 2004 to 2009 have seen the lead acid pack weighing maybe 450 kgs being replaced by the lithium-ion and then the lithium polymers.
A fraction of the weight and hugely increased power ratings.
But they couldn’t possibly be used in the current BetterPlace scenario.
The current and excellent BP scenario will have to be changed, which is normal.

“The only constant in life..is change”

As far as the actual cars are concerned, they would all have to have exactly the same apertures and connections no matter who the car maker is, and the current multi-trillion dollar car makers are no way going to allow just one car maker to be the only one.

My post named “You’ll never get all the car makers to agree” shows how ALL cars have the same petrol inlet/socket. It would be interesting to find out how that actually happened.
Perhaps it was attainable because there were so few countries involved in car making back then.
But today, not only do we have different EV makers around, they are ALL just starting up a new technology, they’re all pretty much different from each other and even as they go along, the power ratings and therefore battery sizes and the very internal structural demands of the cars are changing.

By the time the BetterPlace battswap stations start up or even before they get through the procrastinating Council approvals,
they will be old fashioned and pointless.
In just the next 3 or 4 years (2012) lighter smaller more powerful betteries will be online.
The time and money spent on designing battswap stations and the relevent technology, would be better spent on advanced battery design. ALSO
The hundreds of millions of dollars and the millions of man hours spent on designing and installing and getting government approval for the thousands of stations AROUND THE WORLD would be better spent on advanced battery design. I REPEAT,
by the time these swap stations are built, they will be defunct dinosaurs like the ‘brick’ cellphone.

Cellphones now have cameras, calculators,alarm clocks, road maps, roving internet, juke boxes..
and with mine I can actually phone people up and recieve phone calls. It’s just magic.

That’s what will happen with EV battery systems and the recharging and the replacing (battswap).

I predict that batteries will be available from stores just like today’s cellphones are.
They will be maybe the same size (or less) than a loaf of bread, and just plug into a slot or similar maybe in the trunk/boot. It will be less a cause of awesome wonder than the the “old” 35mmm cameras
and today’s digital cameras. Could you ever have imagined having 100 pictures on those 35mm film rolls and be able to edit and delete etc: before you even get them developed.
Remember “getting the film developed”?
Remember “the brick phone”?
Remember gasoline at 25 cents a gallon/litre?

Now, let’s look at: THE BATTSWAP STATION
What battswap station? Nobody with even a smidgen of memory would upend the planet’s human population by building THOUSANDS of swap stations when it is an undeniable fact that batteries
are going to get smaller beyond our dreams and these stations will be just utterly pointless.
Is it silly to imagine that we will be able to recharge our car’s little batteries by placing them in
our microwave oven?
Or even plug the car’s spare battery into the wall socket alongside the mobile/cell plug.

I can easily remember when even microwave ovens were somebody’s foolish dream.
“Don’t be silly, you’ll never be able to cook food like THAT, you idiot”
“Carry your telephone in your shirt pocket? Don’t be an idiot!
“Travel at 100kph in a car run by batteries?  Never happen!  
(I do, I own one, why don’t YOU?)
or even “Travel at 100kph”?   “If God meant man to……………etc”

In preparing this post, I wrote the first draft of several pages by hand as is my wont and EUREKA!!
I suddenly realised that I was really only writing history.
The future that was history already.
None of us are silly and we all know beyond a fact what’s going to happen.
We all know we know we know.
Yet somebody will still press ahead with battswap stations by the thousands. All over the planet.
AND I HOPE THEY DO….IT’S ALL WE’VE GOT AT THE MOMENT.
But what will happen when EV batteries are reduced in size (by progress) like the mobile/cell battery was?

I agree that EVs will have to change their flattened batteries with recharged batts. You will never be able to just ‘pop into’ a station and get a recharge in the same time span as current petrol refuelling.
But it’s only the battery that has to be changed not the car.
A cell/mobile phone and its battery is small and can be carried around.
A car cannot be carried around but its spare battery can be/will be able to be.

So why would anybody build a station specifically to swap car batteries, when nobody will need to use it?
They won’t need battswap stations ’cause batteries (eventually) will be small enough to change by hand like a large torch/flashlight,

Reading all the above sounds a bit like futureshock.
It’s almost enough to make you think.
I hope.

Or should that be ‘rethink”?

It’s all very well to listen to people’s views on this’n'that but have they been there?
Or maybe they’re just voicing someone’s comments on somebody else’s mag article so maybe it’s three or more people away.
To find out the truth, you gotta DO IT, DO IT, DO IT..

I’d read many of the books and listened to some of the guys one would expect to have some knowledge about the ev scenario.
Most seemed to be pushing their own barrow.
I wasn’t interested in buying one of these homemade projects that guys around the place had “half completed”  etc: etc: you’ve seen them.
Some sort of a beaut ute with a few batteries chucked in the back. Thank you, but no.

I wanted a real live electric vehicle, definately not a hermaphrodite hybrid but a real all-electric CAR.
I saw a couple around but not really. They looked just what they were.

Then I saw it. a normal everyday modern car that you couldn’t tell the difference from an ICE car.
Except that it’s missing an exhaust pipe, and there’s no radiator or oil dipstick or starter motor.
But best of all, there’s no going into a service station to “fill’er’up”.

So I bought it and found out the wonderful truth about “all-electric cars”. I mean this is the
                                                REAL THING

and now, THIS ELECTRIC VEHICLE IS FOR SALE

Reason: another one is on order.
My mission is to get more EV’s on the road
This will reduce the cost and help climate control.
This vehicle has just been converted, so most things are as new.

Batteries are a bit over one year old but have been used only to test the systems so are hardly used except for the bit of driving I’ve been doing.
They have years of use yet.

By then, Lithium batteries will have reduced in price and increased even more in power.
Which means that this car will have even greater range and power.

This is based on a 1998 Daewoo Lanos 3 door hatchback.
It’s just been through the pink slip test and is registered until 16 May 2009
The machine is all black and is pretty well immaculate.

There’s a spoiler and wide tyres and mag wheels. A radio/cd and demister and the usual stuff.
Where the fuel tank input is, there’s a normal 3-pin power socket and you plug in a normal 240 volt extension cord for overnight charging.
Motor:       120 volts, 40Kw
Gear Box:  5 speed clutchless manual
Range:      up to 80 kms depending on terrain and driving speed.
Maximum speed: at least 90kph
Charge rate: 4 hours @ 50% discharge
Batteries: 15 of 8 volt lead acid
Battery life:  3-5 years depending on charge history.
Typical price: $25,000-$30,000 depending on options
Price for this one $18,500. (My new one will be about $30.000)

I’m losing a bit on it but I want to get onto the next one and get more all-electrics on the road.
This car is kept within 10 minutes walking of Wyee station (south of Morisset, north of Gosford)
You will need a small car trailer

CONDITIONS:
 
Join the AEVA  www.aeva.asn.au  and chat your heart out with a great bunch of people.

To view a test drive on this car visit  www.evcapri.com  Get to episode 6 and keep clicking
You’ll get to the YouTube film which will answer most of your “EV”questions.
I’m not the cool looking young guy driving the black car in the film.

If you don’t have about $20,000 cash NOW or you’re “just looking” please don’t apply.
Sorry people, but I just want to sell the car and buy the next one ok?

This is good. I’ve got a few posts up which gives readers an idea of where I’m coming from.
My plan for this blog was to ‘empty the bucket’ about what I’ve been told about EV’s, what I’ve heard and read about them and then get a feed back from various people about what’s been written here, what’s been imagined and then what’s REALLY happening in the EV world, and maybe why it’s happening.

For a start, let’s have a look at the vastness of the challenge of “changingtoelectricvehicles”.

It seems that there are one billion cars on the planet. Only several thousand of them would be electric or hybrid.

The billion cars are all using oil (through petrol or diesel), and have exhaust fumes.
Imagine one billion oil lamps all giving out smoke and heat through the top of the glass shade?
Then try and picture this happening for the last century. Nonstop.
One billion oil lamps burning non-stop for one hundred years.

Then realise that cars give out a lot more heat and smoke than oil lamps.

Now change your thought direction a little bit, and ask yourself why so few leaders of any of the countries of the world are publicly NOT mentioning cars as one of the causes of planetary warming.

Of course cars are not the only and maybe not the largest single polluter, but it does warrant a bit more public mention from the pollies. If we have to be cynical we can be sure that there would plenty of votes for a pollie who is seen to be doing something about replacing petrol cars with EVs.
It’s for sure that the public are for trashing the old ICE cars.

Page 20 of the Sydney Daily Telegraph dated August 20 runs an article stating that demand for hybrids is beating supply, with almost 3000 having been sold in Australia.
So that SOME car manufacturers are listening to the market.
I will repeat my earlier remark that hybrids are hermaphrodites and are just an ICE vehicle using an electric motor as a fuel additive.
But at least it’s a start.

What must be accepted by even the most hard-line EV-er, is that if the Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) was suddenly banned as from RIGHT NOW, manufacturing industries around the world would collapse.
Countless millions of workers would be out of work, the world could head for a depression.

One of the main reasons that cigarette smoking is not totally banned is that even in lightly populated Australia, the tax from cigarette products adds up to billions.
Australia just couldn’t afford a non-smoking population, even if it costs several hundred deaths a year.
The pollies wouldn’t dare mention this truth.

In the same way, World Finance could just not afford a sudden transformation  to all-electric cars.

The same way that the vinyl record makers dissappeared when CDs and DVDs came on the market, then the makers of spark plugs, exhaust pipes, radiators and so on, would just go out of business.

More will be added to this post shortly.

ICE means Internal Combustion Engine.
In my previous blog, I mentioned that the hybrid was just a stop-gap until the real thing  (the all-electric car) came along.
In fact all the hybrid is, is a modern day fuel additive. It does not even NEARLY replace the petrol engine
Are you old enough to remember Redex? It was all the rage in the fifties. 
An additive that you poured into the gas tank every time you filled up. But still the stinky old ICE.

Same with the hybrid. It’s marketed as something that will reduce petrol consumption, oh and it will, it does.
But “reducing petrol consumption” means “reducing the world’s dependance on oil”.
Just reducing it. Not removing it.
So we will still be smogging up cities (like Beijing), and continuing to warm up our planet.

Now you might say that at least hybrids reduce it all by about 30 % and you’re right, but there are 75 million new humans arriving every year on the planet, which means that next year there will be that many MORE one year olds, and so on along the age trail until there are that many more car drivers on the planet’s roads.
So what then the 30% reduction in ICE created carbon gas?.

We have to have Nada, Zilch, Nought , ZERO emission NOW.
And even though we are starting to move away from the ICE in 2008, it will take even the Israelis at least ten years to replace most of that nation’s ICE cars.
Google: “Shai Agassi, a moment of transformation”  There’s no URL. You have to google it.

Now for the scary bit:
It will take at least ten years to change from the ICE age to the electric car age. Fair enough.
But because we are still thinking that “batteries” means lead-acid, we still think that electric cars have a short range and so we compromise by using an ICE for long distances.
So the car makers are going hybrid. Which is an absolute disaster.
It will take ten years to move from the ICE age into the hybrid age, but then another ten years to move from the hybrid age into the all-electric age. That’s twenty years to remove ourselves from oil dependancy and oil wars. That’s too long. We’ll all be dead from shooting each other in the name of democracy or the world climate will have choked us to death. Am I kidding? Did you see the TV shots of the Beijing olympic climate?
I hear that China is building a coal fired power station at the rate of one a week. That’s fifty two a year. Choke.

Add that to the one billion cars around the world and you can understand why I wonder that no Australian politician ever mentions the ICE as being one of the sources of climate change.

I suggest that the year 2008 is the birthing year of the electric car age. There are not really any standards set around the world yet. It’s all new. A bit like the Beta/VHS video tapes.
What’s going to win? The hybrid or the all-electric?

Civilisation has decided that the internal combustion age is drawing to a close.
Looking at the alternative fuels, there really is only electricity.

It’s been successfully used before in the Baker electric car of early 1900’s. It just needed to be updated.
Last century, when the Prius was born, only lead acid batteries were generally available.                    

The Prius is hailed as the break-through electric car. But it’s not. It’s a hermaphrodite.
Of course it’s a lovely car. Of course I’d love to have one. But I’d still need petrol and oil as well as all the electric vehicle equipment.
Why on earth would you have both systems on board?
That’s just plain dumb. Just utterly stupid.

Pull out the old fashioned petrol engine, put in some Lithium-polymer batteries and when they’re discharged, swap them at the same place that you used to get petrol in the old ICE car.
Sounds sensible to me.
Which is probably why it won’t be done. Yeah, I know. It’s much easier to build millions of hybrid petrol/battery cars and in ten years’ time trash them all and build all-electric cars.
I mean, if you went straight to all-electric cars and set up the battery swap equipment, it would give the gas station operators an extra income stream. Setting up the batt-swap equipment will be the same as setting up the LPG pumps around the nation.
It’s a win-win for everybody (except the tax man and the middle east).

Caddilac is promoting their new 2008 Escalade Hybrid.
It’s not an electric car. It’s a hermaphrodite. It’s the old-fashioned ICE vehicle with an electric motor used as a petrol consumption reducer.
It’s being promoted as the cutting edge of technology. It’s got all the big boys’ toys that you could wish.
It is indeed a magnificent machine and wouldn’t I just LOVE to have one! But it still adds to the carbon emission count, along with the one million (sorry) BILLION other cars on the planet.
No wonder the poor world is heating up.

But at least we’re starting to move away from oil dependancy.

We can replace the entire country’s cars.  If we used our military spending for just one year and used the top level minds of the military forces for just one year, we could completely remove our dependency on oil.
One of our Prime Ministers used our tax money to buy every gun in the country, and then he destroyed them all, just like somebody in America (against Americans’ wishes) destroyed every EV1.
And nobody did anything about it.
Now, if one man can use a nation’s tax money to buy that nation’s entire firepower without anybody doing anything about it, what could someone do with (say) two billion dollars? The price of a couple of submarines that are going to be trashed anyway. Kind of an old military man’s phallic symbol.

I respectfully point out that 21 million Australians found two billion dollars to give to Indonesia as aid for the tsunami. It’s been suggested that not all of it was spent correctly–or even spent at all, yet.
If Australia (or any country), can find two BILLION dollars to just give away and another two billion for a couple of subs, how about we “just find” yet another couple of billion to set up a EV battery swap scene at all of our service (petrol/gas) stations? That would immediately stop the need for hybrids and we could go straight through to all-electric vehicles.
It’s just absolutely INSANE to reconfigure the metal framework of an ICE car to take an electric motor and supporting battery system and wiring harness in addition to the petrol/gasoline engine, when you can just build a car with only an electric motor, and use the saved funds to build the battery swap network.

All the battery swap network means is to add the batt/swap equipment to existing gas stations.
No new buildings or sites. Just add to what’s already there.
KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid).
You’ve got regular, super, diesel, E10, LPG, battswap and gas-bottle swap for your caravan. Sounds simple enough to me…

 If we move away from oil dependancy, we wouldn’t need to spend nearly as much to protect the oil fields (via oils wars) and protect the oil transport movements. (Military protection of oil convoys to the war front lines).

Iraq would become a non issue. For Australia, Timor would become a non-issue because we wouldn’t need the oil in the Timor sea anymore. Iran would lose the winning poker hand cause nobody would want their oil anymore, and Israel would be safe because Shai Agassi would have achieved his mission of totally removing oil dependancy by replacing ICE cars with all-electrics.
Everybody gets to breathe a little easier.

For those that are new on the EV scene, a hybrid is an ordinary ICE vehicle with an electric motor installed as a part time helper.
I see it as a car engine with some sort of gadget that gives it better mileage. Maybe a new type of spark plug or a new fuel additive.
But still the stinky old petrol engine.

I suggest that the concept of the hybrid was concieved in the early days of EVs before Lith-batts.
The now defunct lead acid batteries gave only a short travel distance and required many hours for recharging
What this meant is that the battery power part of the car could be used for town duties such as shopping, and the petrol engine used for longer distances.

But the battery problem is over. Firstly, Lithium-Polymer batteries give so much greater distance and they are a sixth of the weight which means that you can instal two or more sets for really longer non-stop travel.

What’s even more important is the realisation that it’s not the car that’s recharged. Only the battery.
The next step from that, is the concept of mentally separating the car from the battery.
All caravans and motor homes have LP gas bottles. If you’ve really got the time to wait around while the bottle is being refilled from the bigger gas tank, that’s fine but why bother.
You’ve got better things to do.
Just swap your empty bottle with a full one and be on your way.
Your caravan gas bottle is swappable. So is your EV battery.

Using this realisation, your EV has the same range as your old ICE car.
In fact, it’s got more - a lot more. Read my post on Hippity Hop where you instal two Lithpaks in your EV, and auto-switch (Hippity Hop) from the discharged batt to the other one.
Then while you’re travelling along, the on-board solar panel driven generator is recharging the first Lithpak.

You know how you wake up in the middle of the night, and have a brilliant idea and if you don’t write it down straight away, you’ll forget what it was about. Some people call it “The Eureka Syndrome”.
Some say “all of a sudden, it came to me” “I had a brilliant idea” and so on.
I found by experiment that this can be done deliberately to solve a problem.

But just like with hypnosis, especially self-hypnosis, you have to ‘talk to yourself’ and give yourself definite instructions.
Now-a-days, they have “Power Naps”. I was shown this stuff in the mid sixties and have used it on almost a daily basis ever since.
If you want to read more about “your mind and you” and heaps about self-hypnosis, go to my link at worldaffiliates.info and “read all about it”. There’s also a couple of MP3’s I wrote about climate warming.

Anyway, I opened up the can of worms called perpetual motion and one night as I drifted away, put the question out to the Universe that I wanted some way to power up an EV without having to recharge the batteries via the main (coal driven) power grid.

I was woken in the middle of the night and presented with a plan that I wrote on a piece of paper that, forwarned by experience, I’d placed on the bedside table. 
Next morning I perused the plan and found it wanting. I remember not exactly how it was wanting.

The following night, on the way towards my usual nightly exodus from this dimension, I admonished the Universe (cheeky bugger that I was), and advised it that, actually, this was not really a sufficient enough answer, and that it had better get serious and give me something that I could work with.

The next day, I found that I’d been woken up again, had written this new plan out and remembered naught about aught of the waking or the writing. It went like this:

The main drive electric motor is driven by the usual battery pack consisting of the old style lead-acid batteries that were used pre the Lithium discovery. (all this happened last century before Lithiums).

This battpak was recharged on call (when required) by a suitably sized generator, the latter being driven not by an LP gas powered motor like the New Zealand buses, but by a small electric motor, and this motor was driven by a separate battery that in turn was charged from a roof solar panel-remembering that solar panels are free power after the repayment of the capital cost.

The above scenario does work or it wouldn’t have been presented to me by you know who.
I suggest that technology has to catch up with the universe before this idea can become reality.

It needs somebody out there with enough electronic engineering theoretical knowledge, to balance  the maths and to bring it to reality. Are you the one?

Older, experienced inmates of a recognized mental institution may be disconnected from society sufficiently enough to supply a sane solution.

ICE = Internal Combustion Engine          EV = Electric Vehicle

So far, to recharge an EV is said to take maybe five hours. 
This is just not on if you plan to use your car in the same way as you’re currently using your present out-of-date stinky ICE car.

You’re used to popping into a service station and recharging with petrol/gasoline in 20 minutes all up.
We’re all creatures of habit and to hell with climate control.
The planet can freeze over before you’ll move out of your comfort zone. Makes sense to me!
Your new EV must be as much as possible the same as your old ICE car (except for the pollution).

One of the suggestions for ‘recharging’ EVs is to simply swap the whole Lithium battery pack (lithpak). 
Remember, a lithbatt is about the same size as your thumb.
A bundle of them make up a lithpak. A pak of batts.
YOU’RE RECHARGING JUST THE BATTERY, NOT THE WHOLE CAR

So your car, truck or bus is not off the road at any time.

A current (2008) Lithpak weighs around 100kgs.
Even if you broke it into two, that would still be 50kgs each which is more than most people can lug around their garage or service station, so some kind of robot arm like those in the auto car wash will be necessary. It’s not rocket science.

As far as the neighbourhood service/gas station is concerned – and there are millions of them, all the same, in every country - this does NOT mean getting rid of all the petrol/gas pumps (at least until all the ICE vehicles are gone)

Service/gasoline stations have petrol/gasoline pumps to which have been added the screw-on LP gas pumps that came on the market a few years ago.
You simply add this extra income stream to your petrol/gas station business EXACTLY like you added the swap system of the 9kg LP gas bottles for caravanners

You added on the LP gas car pump, then you added the LP gas bottle swap scene, now you add the lithpak swap scene and you can recharge the swapped discharged lithpaks whenever.

One wall of the building has racks of 100kg lithpaks all of which are plugged into sockets on the wall just like the socket on your mobile/cell phone. 
These wall sockets are all networked to the solar panels on the roof. Exactly like the bus station Adelaide.
The sockets are NOT connected to the power grid, so recharging costs nothing.
The capital cost of the panels and battery-moving trolley will be repaid in a few months and then it’s all profit. You have a problem with that?

BUT BUT BUT………

You’ve asked, where’s the lithpak going to be in the car ? You’ll never get the car makers to standardise a battery slot in the same place in every car. There’s just too many different types of cars.

In the States there’s GM, Ford, Chrysler, Cadillac, Buick and more.
In Europe, there’s VW, Mercedes, Skoda, Saab, Volvo, BMC, Jaguar, Rolls, Bentley and more.
In Japan there’s…. in China there’s……..got the point ?

SOMEBODY has ‘said’ to all these multi-billion dollar car makers years ago “listen guys, if you want to sell all your cars all over the world, you either standardise your  petrol/gas, and LP-gas screw-on apertures, or nobody will buy them”. 
You just cannot have different diameter pump nozzles for every make of car.

It’s not until now, dear reader, that you’ve realised that EVERY car on the planet Earth has EXACTLY the same petrol/gasoline recharge socket/aperture.
And they all have to be recharged from exactly the same shaped pump handle thing-ummy.

All pumps in every country are the same. THEY HAVE TO BE, because all car apertures are the same.
Who thought that one up?
A very clever person. Or very powerful.
Anybody out there got his phone number?

So you can travel round the world in the same car, and recharge it with petrol/gasoline/diesel from every pump.
If they can do it once for petrol/gasoline, they can do it for Lithpaks.
I rest my case.

President Kennedy (or his speechwriter) should have said “By the year 2020, the only petrol-driven car left on the planet Earth will be in a museum”.
But what I’m now saying is: In yer dreams, buddy. If the hybrid people get their way, it’ll be at least 2030

There’s no doubt that the days of the ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) are numbered.

Whether the planet’s supply of oil is running out or not, the price will never reduce so much that it will go back to the old prices of even five years ago. 
The search for alternative power is definitely on.

Even if the price did reduce right down, social conscience has finally realized that car exhaust fumes have got to go.  
Climate change/planetary warming or not, the old fashioned cars stink nearly as bad as a smoker’s breath.

Even though the moon shot space vehicles were powered by hydrogen fuel batteries, the ordinary person is not going to be persuaded to allow them in his family car.

So we’re left with the good old car battery.  
But the only constant is change, and the old lead/acid battery, like your old ICE car, is finished.

The main problem/challenge with EV’s has been not just the restricted power of lead batteries, but the size and weight of them.

Let’s use ball-park figures: 
To power up an EV, you need X amount of batteries depending on how far you want the car to travel. 
I suggest the battery weight would be about 600kgs for 100kms.
Such a weight restricts take-off and stopping power and reduces any decent road-handling.

At the moment, Lithium batteries are the way to go. Of course, they’ll get smaller, lighter, cheaper as time goes by. Currently, for the same distance that 600kgs of old batts will take you, you need only about 100 kgs of lithbatts. I said ball-park figures.

Lithpaks also take up less than half the space of old batts, so you could even put in two lithpaks and double the traveling distance. 
A lithbatt is about the size of your thumb. 
A Lithpak is as many lithbatts as you want in your lithpak.  Ho hum.
Sure they cost perhaps a third more, but they give double the power and they last many more years as well. It’s a no-brainer.
And that’s only the first Lithpaks. They’ll improve. 
Wait, there’s more!!

A sensible amount of Lithbatts can be built into one pack, rather the shape of a carton of drink cans, (use your imagination), pretty much like a giant mobile (cell) phone battery.

“So what” you ask. Well, on the outside of the Lithpak, can be placed contacts exactly like those on your mobile (cell) phone batt.

Moving along, you can see that this means that the Lithpak can be just plugged into every EV.
Sure, it weighs maybe 100kg, but if there’s a slot in the side or end of your EV, a trolley holding the Lithpak can be wheeled up to the slot and the battpak placed in/on the roller tray in your car, and just slid into place. No battery leads to connect. Just plug it in.

Moving even further along, you don’t need to take your EV off the road for many hours of re-charging. You’ve got (EVERY ev will have) two lithpaks. One is sitting on your garage bench being re-charged.        You drive in, slide out the used lithpak onto the trolley, roll it over onto the re-charge bench and slide the second (recharged) lithpak into the roller tray in the side of your EV. 
That’s even easier than changing over your existing battery with its leads.

And of course your recharged lithpak will fit into all your cars.
But wait, there’s more!!

Every service station can have an EV-batt (lithbatt) battswap station.
It’s NOT rocket science. You’ve been in an auto car-wash ?
There are robot arms coming from everywhere.
Hot water, Soapy water, giant brushes for the sides then the top then the back of your 90 thousand dollar car, and you sit in there, not worried.

Sliding a battery out and replacing it with a re-charged one (using a robot arm) is child’s play.
You do exactly the same thing with your caravan LP-gas bottle. 
You don’t wait around to have it recharged from the big gas tank in the service station. You just drive in and swap it.

So just drive in and swap your lithpak, without even getting out of your car. 
Straight away, this means that you can drive right around Australia.
(I didn’t say non-stop)                         
At the moment, you MUST stop to recharge your ICE car with petrol. 
I suggest that that takes at least 15 minutes.
In the near future, instead of stopping for petrol/gas, you will stop to swap your lithpak. You have a problem?

“Oh, you say, the lithpaks are recharged from the nation’s power grid and so from the  coal burning power stations.” 
Have a look on the roof of the service station.

See all those solar panels? It’s costing almost zilch for the service station owner to recharge all the lithpaks from those solar panels.
And no planetary footprint at all. 
It’s going to cost you A LOT less for a swap lithpak than for a tank of petrol (gasoline). 
He’s got maybe 100 in stock, all charged up. Just like all those charged-up LP gas bottles that he’s got over there in the cage for his caravan customers.

Why would you build new “charge stations” or “swap stations” for EV’s?

Until the change over from ICE cars to EV’s, the present petrol pumps are going to be needed.
What? Ten maybe fifteen years? 
Remember not so long ago when LP gas cars came on the road? 
The service stations with LP gas pumps were limited.
Now they’re everywhere.

Service stations kept the petrol pumps and simply added in the new LP gas  pumps, you know, the ones with the screw nozzle thing on.
THEY HAD TO. 
So now, they will just add in the Lithpak swap robot scenario.
THEY WILL HAVE TO.

So they won’t suddenly be put out of business.
It will be another service until petrol cars are phased out.
Until then, they’ll sell petrol, diesel, LP gas and batt-swap.
Maybe even healthy food. (never happen).

“Yeah, but what about recharging at home. You’ll still use the power grid”.

Excuse me….. Put a solar panel out in the sun and plug your Lithpak recharger into it. Your EV will cost you exactly nothing to run.

“Yeah, but I’ll have to pay for the solar panel”

Excuse me…………it will cost a few month’s of your current petrol cost . And then for the rest of your life it will be FREE.
You have a problem about that?