OT: 230 MPG car ..., Cars related Options

[johannes]

A 230 MPG car that ... looks nice ...

(IMG:http://apteramotors.com/images/photo_7.jpg)

http://apteramotors.com/

[LarryR]

That is pretty cool ...

If you feel like saying screw the oil and gas companies you could always convert your 914 to electric. There is a kit readily available. If you want power then you are looking @ 13K for an AC motor kit and 10K for a DC motor kit.

I plan on doing it once the Lithium Ion batteries get cheaper. The big negatives right now are that with lead acid batteries the range is 150 miles and the weight of the car goes up to 3200 pounds. With Lithium Ion batteries you can go 4X the distance and they weigh half as much.

Then there are the obvious trade offs of performance vs range ala tesla (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rocking nana.gif)
http://www.teslamotors.com/index.php?js_enabled=1
0 - 60 in 4 sec
250 miles per charge
1 cent per mile

Once the aforementioned batteries become cheaper I bet there will be a bunch of EV 914's

[Demick]

1 cent per mile

I've done some calculations, and figure closer to 5 cents per mile for electric.

Anyone charging an electric car at home will be way over baseline quantities and the price goes way up (at least where I live). I know that for 130% to 200% of baseline quantities, I pay 22 cents per KWH. I don't know if the price continues to increase above 200%, but you would certainly find out if you dump 20KWH into your car every day. So unless you spend $20K on a solar array on top of your home, electric isn't as cheap as you might think. But if you can afford a $100K Tesla car, then you ought to have no problem with the solar array too.

Also, don't forget that your battery replacement cost on the Tesla is about 30 cents per mile ($30,000 per 100,000 miles)

A fuel efficient car can be in the 7 or 8 cents per mile range for fuel.

P.S. Don't get me wrong. I would REALLY like to build an electric car to commute in, and I've looked into the costs in a pretty detailed way, and have come to the conclusion that an electric car costs several times as much to run as a fuel efficient gas car. But the time will come.

[LarryR]

1 cent per mile

I've done some calculations, and figure closer to 5 cents per mile for electric.

Anyone charging an electric car at home will be way over baseline quantities and the price goes way up (at least where I live). I know that for 130% to 200% of baseline quantities, I pay 22 cents per KWH. I don't know if the price continues to increase above 200%, but you would certainly find out if you dump 20KWH into your car every day. So unless you spend $20K on a solar array on top of your home, electric isn't as cheap as you might think. But if you can afford a $100K Tesla car, then you ought to have no problem with the solar array too.

Also, don't forget that your battery replacement cost on the Tesla is about 30 cents per mile ($30,000 per 100,000 miles)

A fuel efficient car can be in the 7 or 8 cents per mile range for fuel.

P.S. Don't get me wrong. I would REALLY like to build an electric car to commute in, and I've looked into the costs in a pretty detailed way, and have come to the conclusion that an electric car costs several times as much to run as a fuel efficient gas car. But the time will come.

Granted I was hiting the highlights as posted on the Tesla sight... However, one thing I would like to point out is that the batteries will no way cost 30K per 100K miles. I can provide you with tons of documentation on this. There is only a 1% loss of capacity per 1000 charges. So in theory the battery pack could really last your life time. At least that is what the new Lithiom Ion Phosphate batteries are achieving.

[Demick]

Granted I was hiting the highlights as posted on the Tesla sight... However, one thing I would like to point out is that the batteries will no way cost 30K per 100K miles. I can provide you with tons of documentation on this. There is only a 1% loss of capacity per 1000 charges. So in theory the battery pack could really last your life time. At least that is what the new Lithiom Ion Phosphate batteries are achieving.

From the Tesla site:

Li-Ion batteries are good for 500 complete charge/discharge cycles. One cycle consists of discharging the pack from 100% state of charge (SOC) to 0% SOC. Realistically, drivers will not completely discharge their pack. More likely, drivers will drive the car for 50 or 100 miles then plug it back in to charge it up to 100% SOC. Driving only 50 miles is only a partial discharge, roughly using 20% of the charge. If a driver continues to drive 50 miles every day and recharges every night, then after 5 days they would complete the equivalent of one charge/discharge cycle.

In estimating the life of our batteries, you can multiply the number of cycles by the range. Thus, 500 cycles times 250 miles/charge works out to 125,000 miles, but our estimate is a more conservative 100,000 miles. However the cycle life of 500 cycles is based upon performance that is more challenging to the battery cells than our application. We believe that our pampered batteries will achieve more cycles due to temperature control of the batteries and minimizing the maximum charge voltage.