Electric Car Truths

Many people are aware that petrol and diesel are the major fuels of vehicles and while petrol is claimed to be the original fuel of the internal combustion engine, this claim is contradicted by facts which show that a compression ignition or diesel engine was the first engine produced and it actually ran off locally produced nut oil through a carburettor.
Vehicles come in two main configurations and these are the longitudinal engine which sits front to back and the gearbox is located under the floor between the front seats, and the transverse engine which sits side to side under the bonnet with the gearbox at the end of the engine, or underneath it where it may form a common sump for the engine with a shared lubricating oil supply. Longitudinal engines with rear wheel drive were the original engine configuration as power was fed through the gearbox and a propeller shaft to the rear axle to drive the vehicle, but with a 4X4 configuration there is a transfer case between the gearbox and propeller shaft to allow an additional propeller shaft to feed a front axle to give four wheel drive in either a selectable or constant four wheel drive capability.

In a transverse configuration there is a transfer box located at the rear of the engine which powers a propeller shaft to the rear axle to give four wheel drive.
LPG is liquefied petroleum gas and petrol engines can be converted to run on LPG and petrol and LPG is merely a mixture pf propane and butane gas, this mixture varies with temperature as summer gas has more propane, but in winter they add more butane to cope with the cooler conditions. LPG powered vehicles were originally converted petrol engines of larger petrol engined vehicles and Range Rover V8 petrol engines were prime candidates and often converted because they were thirsty engines and LPG cost around half the price of petrol, but other large engined vehicles were also converted. LPG also has drawbacks and the main one is energy density, basically you lose around 20% of your converted engine power running on LPG but this is offset by the fact that most automotive engines only run at full power for less than 5% of their running life and this is only ever under hard acceleration or when towing heavy weights and for the remainder of the time they ran under part load conditions. Early LPG conversions required both petrol and LPG as they were started on petrol and once the engine was warmed they could be switched to LPG running, they also required an additional LPG tank to hold the LPG under pressure as well as an injection system to inject the gas into the engine and the associated control equipment to measure the tank contents of the additional LPG tank.

LPG was in its infancy and many people converted them to save money and it had the benefits of petrol operation for full power running for heavy towing or off road work, and the ability to switch over to economical running on LPG for general work such as commuting or long distance cruising on motorways where speeds were limited and there was no need for the additional engine power. LPG had another enormous benefit as it significantly reduced exhaust emissions and when emissions testing became part of the MOT test older engines which were marginal on emissions testing passes could be switched over to running on LPG for the MOT test and easily pass this emissions test, perfectly legally and many MOT testing stations did this for customers.
Costs dictated the conversions and LPG cost less than half that of petrol and when the cost of the conversion was factored in it took less than three years of average mileage motoring to recoup this cost and make real cost savings, and reduce the exhaust emissions of your vehicle, so a win win situation for your pocket and environmental emissions.

Advances in electronic engine control technologies allowed engines to run at a wider range of parameters and this allowed engines to run at their optimum settings for most of the time by changing various engine settings such as timing and even fuel injection duration, and even reading the air temperature and density entering the engine and injecting the correct amount of fuel for it. These advances also allowed the engines to run a wide range of parameters which also allowed various engine fuels such as gases which meant a wide range of gases could be used, other than the traditional LPG, so hydrogen, propane, butane, HHO and any other gas could be readily injected into the engine and give reasonable performance. Hydrogen is the most abundant element on earth and is the natural fuel for automotive applications as it uses a basic petrol engine, it produces reasonable power, it is a cheap fuel to produce, and it has minimal exhaust pipe emissions; so basically current petrol engined cars can have minimal engine modifications before production and produced cheaply as gas powered cars.

Volvo produced a gas powered car and set a standard for terminology, they claimed its exhaust pipe emissions were cleaner than the air the engine sucked in and they were correct, many scientific experiments were carried out on these vehicles from a range of disciplines and they all confirmed this fact. Problems arose because in Europe and most of the world, gas isn’t readily available and this lack of a gas infrastructure virtually killed sales; in addition the powerful oil lobby were fighting this and weren’t prepared to install a gas infrastructure at forecourts.
Gas had no real major disadvantages as you could quickly and easily fill them in much the same way as you filled a petrol or diesel car, it was much cheaper, it was much cleaner on exhaust emissions, and you could fill up with as much or little fuel as you liked. Disadvantages were minor in that you had to twist the filler pipe onto the vehicle, you had to overcome the reduced range by either filling up a little more often, or manufacturers had to replace the petrol or diesel tank with larger gas tanks to compensate for this slight range deficiency, and testing found that the engines needed much less servicing so service intervals could be extended which meant less oil based lubricants were being used.

Why language fraud? Because Volvo subjected their gas engined vehicles to so much independent testing, the testing organisations tested every claim individually and exhaust pipe emissions became the norm for Governments who realised their claims of only 20% of the energy was used in building and recycling a vehicle was a lie proven by actual evidence. They chose to simply ignore it and use other terminology to dupe a generally ignorant public and deflect the attention elsewhere.
Engineers from around the world universally agree that hydrogen is the only viable fuel for vehicles of the future as it requires minimal modifications to a vehicle engine and utilise current lean manufacturing methods for vehicle production, and advance technologies such as longer service intervals to reduce the amount of servicing and servicing parts for customers.
Therefore it possible to easily modify petrol engines into gas engines able to run off current LPG or hydrogen , or a range of gases as this will not affect current vehicle types and particularly, vehicle prices and as most vehicles are sold on price, is important for the consumers as buyers.

Gas can be used in other ways and this is to provide electricity for electrically powered cars and this is done using a hydrogen fuel cell which uses a chemical process to convert the hydrogen into electrical energy to power an electric motor, but this has issues. Fuel cells are a proton membrane coated with platinum and convert the pressurised hydrogen gas and airborne oxygen into its individual parts and the electrons are allowed to flow to provide the electrical power to the control electronics and to the motor powering the vehicle. As this conversion takes place the only emissions are water and heat and the electrical conversion takes place in the fuel cell which has no moving parts other than the pressurised hydrogen, oxygen naturally entering, and the water exiting the fuel cell to the exhaust, and this; according to traditional thinking, makes them reliable. As the hydrogen is depleted the fuel tank is refilled from a fuel pump in virtually the same way that a petrol or diesel engine is filled and takes about the same time to fill. Converting hydrogen to electricity takes time as the fuel cell has to kick in and to prevent this delay a battery is installed in the circuit to cover this delay and give instant power on demand.

As yet no hydrogen fuel cell car is available for outright purchase in the UK as the lack of a hydrogen infrastructure and technical issues mean they are all leased which does also protect the consumer from major technical issue costs, should they occur. Vehicles also cost a lot more to purchase and run as the low volume of hydrogen means costs remain high, but will fall massively as fuel cells and a hydrogen infrastructure is installed and mass production takes place. Most engineers claim hydrogen will be the fuel of the future as it is the most abundant element and the cheapest to convert into fuel so the hydrogen can be used as an internal combustion engine or converted into electrical energy for an electric vehicle.

Electric Cars

These come in three main types which are full electric vehicles, hybrids, and partial hybrids; and suffer many problems. Our main one is the environmental cost of producing these vehicles as they are the most environmentally unfriendly of all vehicles to produce and this fact is conveniently ignored by Governments as is the fact that the electrical grid is at maximum capacity and plugging in a lot of electrical vehicles will overload it. Overcoming this problem will mean spending on a huge infrastructure which will be paid for by taxpayers directly through high electricity bills and indirectly through taxpayer funded subsidies awarded by Governments. Governments are already preparing this to justify spending huge amounts on private corporations to subsidise them and maintain their huge incomes and large profits.

Full electric cars are the most basic to understand as they are little more than oversized toy cars with large electric motors and a rechargeable battery and they have several major problems right from the outset and the first is range. When a manufacturer produces a battery it has a rating and this along with the motor, determines its range, and every electric car producer always cites its range as “up to” and gives a maximum range, and this is the maximum theoretical range and not its actual range under working conditions. Batteries deteriorate and as they deteriorate they lose capacity, as they lose capacity they lose range, and the range manufacturers stipulate is always in ideal conditions and vehicles are never used under ideal conditions, they can never hit their claimed ranges and the public are again duped by these words. In winter and cold conditions a batteries performance drops and if we add winter conditions such as low temperatures and short days meaning lights will be needed along with heaters and demisters then we can see a huge additional load on a battery which is in less than perfect condition. In poor conditions in which major hold ups are possible such as icy and heavy snow conditions, range anxiety becomes a major issue if you are held up as you have to switch off lights and heaters to conserve power and if your batteries are low you can easily be caught out with a flat battery. Other serious issues come to the fore and these are their working voltages which are in the 400-600 volt working range so in the event of an accident the risk of electrocution becomes a major issue, and not all accidents you will be involved in will be your fault, so realistically you and your family could be electrocuted for a non fault accident.

Environmental issues in producing battery packs for vehicles is a major concern as to produce one small, current battery produced the same environmental issues as a major luxury car running a large V8 engine for 7 years, so no the environmental claims are dismissed as pure fantasy, and the rest of the car has to be produced. Recycling is also a major issue as only three major battery components can be recycled and this leaves the rest of the battery which will inevitable be dumped in third world countries and ignored as we currently do and this does nothing for environmental sustainability as it merely moves the issue, out of sight, out of mind springs to mind. Charging these batteries is also a problem as a current 7.4Kw charger consumes over 30 amps and the vehicle battery will take several hours to charge so costs of consuming this amount of energy are huge, and the floating tariffs they are planning to introduce will make charging a battery car hugely expensive as they need several hours to charge. Weight is a major issue as all electric vehicles are much heavier than petrol, diesel, or hydrogen powered internal combustion engines and this reduces payloads, this reduces the amount of passengers you can carry, the amount you can tow and this means most caravans and trailers will go, and for vans and other commercial vehicles, they can carry less cargo.

Charging is a major issue and for several reasons; if a home owner has two cars and they park them on their driveway and charge them they are exposed to the risk of thieves stealing their charging cables, and if thieves are stealing live cables from railways then stealing a much lower voltage charging cable is not to be ignored. Loads on the house electrical supply will be immense and peak loading times will be moved from mornings and evenings for a short duration to night time for a long duration.
What if you live in a terraced house or a house with no driveway, or a block of flats? In reality you will have to have on street charging systems installed and this means having cables trailing on the street which will increase the chances of theft. It will also increase the chances of fraud as anyone can unplug your vehicle in the early hours and plug their vehicle in for a few hours, and you end up with a low charge and a large bill for electricity you haven’t used. Trip hazards are another major issue, particularly with the elderly, infirm, or disabled people and the insurance industry is already discussing the huge hike in insurance premiums to cover the claims they expect to happen. Now imagine when people have children and they grow up and get their cars, three, four, or even five cars on a driveway charging, it is a huge electrical load.

Hybrid vehicles are a better solution as they use a petrol engine as their main power source and incorporate a facility to charge a much smaller battery to give a limited electric only range and this gives an option of using petrol for long runs and battery power for short distances such as stop, start city centre running. Batteries are much smaller and cheaper, charge while on the move by various means, and they take nothing from the electricity grid to charge them, they are not heavy and cumbersome vehicles and most can switch between battery power and engine running scenarios encountered in the real world driving conditions. Major issues arise from their use of CVT transmissions and generally this means the engine revs excessively under acceleration where as a conventional automatic would change up a gear, and this constant high revving does engine life and petrol economy no good. Hybrids have no range anxiety as they use petrol and can be filled up as normal and operate nearly as normally as a petrol engine.

Partial hybrids are as near to a conventional vehicle as you can get and they have an even smaller generating unit and battery and they work by simply applying the motor power in conjunction with the engine when accelerating, to reduce emissions. They cannot run on electric power alone as neither the motor or battery are large enough and their only function is to add performance when accelerating hard to reduce engine load, and emissions.
What can we conclude from this? Governments are clearly lying to us and citing disproven environmental emissions figures and manipulating words by claiming “tailpipe emissions” when cars all produce emissions of around 80% during their manufacture and recycling; electric cars produce more.
Why do Governments want us all on one fuel instead of the current petrol, diesel, Autogas, and electric options currently available, money seems the obvious answer but control is another as the grid can be shut down and nobody can recharge their electric cars. What is the reasoning for giving us only one choice of fuel.
CARTEL?

HAS ANYONE ASKED THE QUESTION, WHY DO THEY ONLY WANT ONE POWER SOURCE AND NO CHOICE.

assassin wrote:HAS ANYONE ASKED THE QUESTION, WHY DO THEY ONLY WANT ONE POWER SOURCE AND NO CHOICE.[/b]

To me may be am wrong but its about CONTROL, especially commercial computer CONTROL, if they are not paid they switch off.....

So what happens when there's any power cuts - obviously no ones going anywhere in these bumper cars. Another aspect is once again control, at least you can store fuel regardless of it going off.

Just like the power cuts we had in the area on Wednesday night which wiped most of the areas electric out for several hours while most people were in bed, and many alarm clocks failed to go off in the morning.

The water flowed, my turbines turned, and I had electricity all night.