A while back there was talk of modifying a Jet Provost with a paddle in the exhaust to simulate a twin jet… No reason you couldn’t add carb heat and mixture levers to an electric aircraft and simulate a piston engine. You could actually do better, as you could make the engines give symptoms of carb-icing if the student was neglecting it. Alternatively, you could give the student a slow-response throttle to simulate flying a jet, rather cheaply, and give the instructor an instant-response throttle for safety.
Batteries that can be charged in 15 minutes and last 1000+ cycles have been commercially available for nearly a decade. (A123)
In Norway, “anything” is possible because of the hydro electric power combined with a small and very wealthy population.
… not to mention the oil revenue.
Did you know that the electric vehicles are less fuel efficient than the gas powered cars?
Here are the numbers picked from the internet. Let’s start with the tank full of gas.
The modern car engine has efficiency of about 35%.
The electric motor has efficiency of about 90%.
But to deliver electric power to the motor means:
To generate electricity in a power station – let’s consider a power station running on gas – efficiency around 40%.
Transfer via electric grid – 93%
Storage in batteries – 85%
So – this makes the efficiency of the electric car about 28%.
No, it’s nowhere near that bad, Li-Ion is way better than 85% efficient (think of the enormous heat if they weren’t with the energy demand of a car). If you leave the car sitting for a year perhaps Li-Ion will only be 85% efficient.
The Tesla model S for example uses 237.5 W/h per kilometre. A Mercedes CLA class (which has a similar drag coefficient to the Model S) will go 10km on 1L of fuel (which contains 30.1MJ energy). 2370W/h that the Tesla uses to go 10km is 8.5MJ energy. Even if the ultimate efficiency of the Tesla were only 28% then the initial fuel at the power station would only be equivalent of the Mercedes, at about 30.4MJ, but the Tesla is a lot more powerful than the Merc (which has only a 2.0L engine). The other thing is the Model S can run on nuclear power or hydro power or wind power, which the Merc can’t do. It also can recover a lot of the braking energy in stop-start traffic which the Merc can’t do, and doesn’t have to idle.
There is absolutely ZERO argument that electric cars and electric planes are the absolute dog’s bollocks.
Brushless 3 phase motors are miniscule for the power they produce, and will last for ever. Maintenance would be basically buying two sealed ball bearings from Ebay, every 10000 hours…
They just need to find a way to
Oh I nearly forgot…
Simple, really!
No, it’s nowhere near that bad, Li-Ion is way better than 85% efficient
All available electric cars lose about 20% of the electric energy during charging. That is a lot and needs to be improved significantly. Outside a very small temperature window, the losses are far bigger as the battery has to be heated or cooled, even when the vehicle is parked.
A Mercedes CLA class (which has a similar drag coefficient to the Model S) will go 10km on 1L of fuel
You have to be a pretty aggressive driver to consume 10l/100km with a 4 cylinder CLA. 7-8l is more realistic. And when comparing efficiency, you should be fair and use the most efficient ICE which is a small turbocharged diesel. There the consumption will be 4-5l/100km but with some more MJ/l. Also the CLA weighs about half of what the Model S weighs so the comparison is very much flawed and the drag coefficient is not the determining factor here.
It also can recover a lot of the braking energy in stop-start traffic
Recuperation in real life is between 5% (long distance) and 25% (city). I average at 20%. The Tesla Wh/km figure is includes an optimistic assumption about recuperation.
You have to be a pretty aggressive driver to consume 10l/100km with a 4 cylinder CLA. 7-8l is more realistic.
The figures I quoted were the same EPA cycle for both vehicles, so comparing like with like. If 7-8L is more realistic for the CLA, then a lower kW/h usage for the Model S is also realistic by a similar proportion.
All available electric cars lose about 20% of the electric energy during charging.
It surprises me the losses would be so high, decent switch mode power supplies get 95% efficiency (I’ve got almost 90% efficiency out of a 555-timer based switch mode power supply I built on breadboard which is hardly ideal), and Li-Ion batteries don’t get hot during charging (which indicates the batteries themselves can’t be wasting energy during charging). If a Li-Ion battery gets hot during charging it’s usually a sign that you should discontinue charging it immediately since it’s developed a fault. Perhaps NiMH electric cars would waste that much (all the NiMH batteries I’ve ever used get warm during charging). What is causing the waste on Li-Ion chargers for electric vehicles?
The figures I quoted were the same EPA cycle for both vehicles, so comparing like with like.
Certainly not. Mercedes states an EPA cycle consumption of 5l/100km for the CLA 180 and 5.7l/100km for the CLA 200. For the diesel it’s 4.2l/100km. The UK site has the mpg variant so you have to convert. 10l/100km was my 300hp 6 cylinder convertible that I traded in for the electric car…
It surprises me the losses would be so high
I think the losses are linked to the chargers. Some AC 220/380V 2/3 phase must be converted to DC of some other arbitrary voltage and trickle.
During the winter here, the charging may take up to three times as long as during a hot summer day. If this is due to losses or just the chemistry in the batteries being slowed down, I don’t know, but Teslas with their enormous batteries can be problematic to charge during nights even with high voltage chargers.
