Electric bug out vehicle

[JKGlock17]

check out the Tesla car it can get 300 miles to a charge

[RobertNashville]

check out the Tesla car it can get 300 miles to a charge

Those are upwards of $100K and some have been catching fire haven't they?

[RobertNashville]

...Get one of these. I will be sh00ting at people driving Prius' sissy cars.

Every time I see one I think about the movie "The Other Guys" and "giant vagina"...however, I haven't shot any of the them; I feel too sorry for the drivers.

[mcurrier]

...however, I haven't shot any of the them; I feel too sorry for the drivers.

True. They are pretty pathetic.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Haven't given much thought about the current crop of fabulously expensive all electric vehicles. Or fabulously expensive hybrids either. Hybrids don't have the range restrictions and don't need anywhere near as big a battery because much of the savings in a hybrid are being able to run the engine in its optimum performance region and partial recovering energy of inertia with dynamic braking.

As long as the cost is high, a fella with limited means would have to calculate if the energy savings would amortize the extra cost of the vehicle over the projected lifetime of the vehicle. And so far such calculations show it making no sense money-wise.

But if they ever get the cost "within reason" then all electric vehicles might start to make sense for some drivers, especially if a fella kept his old gas guzzler for toting heavy loads or long trips.

For instance I don't have to drive much and rarely go out of town. The Wrangler is 2 years old and it just ticked over 5000 miles on the odometer. About 48 miles per week.

Piggy-backing on monkeylizard's previous specs, said the Leaf batt capacity of 22 KWH has a range of about 138 miles. So my average driving might consume 7.65 KWH per week. Assuming 4 hours of good sun per day, would need to generate that power in 28 hours per week. A home solar array of only 273 watts could do it. Of course monkeylizard said the leaf electronics needs to charge from a 15 amp source and therefore the charging interface may need modification or workaround. And there would be conversion inefficiencies to account for.

So possibly I would need a 500 watt array in the real world. A 1000 watt solar array might be better to account for prolonged cloudy conditions and occasional peak-use weeks of the vehicle. If one were bound and determined to run entirely on solar and never ever charge off TVA power in an emergency.

And it would be desirable to have a vehicle that looks more like a jeep than a leaf, which would need more power.

However if the price falls some more on all electric vehicles, it does look maybe feasible that I could "get by" with the majority of my driving powered by solar, using zero gasoline and zero juice from TVA. Interesting.

[mikegideon]

Lester,

I haven't read up on electric car batteries, but most rechargeables have a self discharge rate. So, you may not get back what you put into them if you use the charge over a long period.

Dynamic braking is cool. Instead of turning the energy into heat with conventional braking, you convert it back to stored energy.

When it comes to charging a car with solar, you have the capital outlay for the gear. Another detail that requires some pencil work. It works real well using Obamamath. Not sure how well it works if you remove his (perceived) unlimited supply of money.

Edited October 13, 2012 by mikegideon

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Lester,

I haven't read up on electric car batteries, but most rechargeables have a self discharge rate. So, you may not get back what you put into them if you use the charge over a long period.

Dynamic braking is cool. Instead of turning the energy into heat with conventional braking, you convert it back to stored energy.

When it comes to charging a car with solar, you have the capital outlay for the gear. Another detail that requires some pencil work. It works real well using Obamamath. Not sure how well it works if you remove his (perceived) unlimited supply of money.

Thanks, Mike. Yep lots of imponderables. Some lithium chemistries have fairly low self-discharge rate, but there are so many lithium chemistries. Another question would be regarding longevity of the battery if the vehicle is driven very lightly. Maybe the battery would need replacing after Y years regardless whether the owner runs high or low mileage? That would be a shame, but ferinstance I've had lots of laptops with lithium batts, and I've never run them off battery daily. Only occasionally, and it seems lucky if a laptop battery will last 4 or 5 years regardless whether you work the battery hard.

Though a different chemistry, same thing with lead acid batts. Some years ago I built a "plaything" long-term UPS with a nice statpower 40 amp three stage smart-charger, modest wattage inverter, and 400 AH of Guardian AGM 12 volt batteries. The idea was to have available a hundred or two hundred watts for a "farily long time" if the electricity goes down. My old generator was obnoxiously loud, so figgered it might be good to have a modest long-term UPS that could run some hours, and recharge it running the genny a few hours in the day, in case of a long-term outage. Anyway I didn't use that system very much but kept it on "float" plugged into the wall. The statpower chargers are sposed to be pretty intelligent keeping a battery bank on "float charge" like that. Maybe if I had taken the time to RELIGIOUSLY exercise the batteries once a week or once a month they may have lasted a little longer, but they were basically dead as a doorknob after 5 or 6 years. Which is their advertised lifetime under heavy use as well (as long as the battery isn't abused), but MAYBE exercising them would have helped. Then again, maybe exercising them more would have killed em sooner.

But it would be kinda nice if an all-electric vehicle's batteries would last a long time for a low-mileage driver.

If somebody had an all-electric vehicle then assuming TVA keeps making electricity, and assuming we don't have crazy-high electricity energy inflation, then charging the vehicle off TVA power is virtually guaranteed cheaper than solar-charging unless one amortizes the solar gear a long-long-long time. Or unless solar panels suddenly get a bunch cheaper. But if things just gradually fall apart into the future, electric rates skyrocket and outages become common-- The USA gradually becoming a third-world nation-- In that case solar charging might be the cat's meow even if it costs a little more?

Also cost per mile isn't the only thing we spend our money on, otherwise we would be such penny-pinchers we would all be riding vespa scooters or mopeds if we were too lazy to pedal a bicycle everywhere. So unless solar charging was "crazy expensive" a fella might want to do it "just because".

My low mileage driving is probably in a minority. The old astro van, it took me 20 years to put 77,000 miles on it and its still in great condition. I bought the Wrangler figuring it would be the last vehicle I ever buy, unless it falls apart too quick mainly sitting in the driveway, or I happen to live more than another 15 or 20 years.

Not trying to prove anything, just running some numbers--

Last two years I drove about 2500 miles per year, which is a little lower than the previous 20 year average of about 3850 miles per year on the old Astro van. Wrangler gets maybe 18 MPG, so possibly 138.9 gallons gas per year. At $3.50 per gallon, $486 per year fuel expense. Seems impossible to predict future energy inflation. Perhaps 10 percent per year energy cost inflation would be a "worst case" scenario. One would hope so. On the other hand, maybe it could get so high that in hindsight a 10 percent per year inflation would seem foolish wishful thinking.

Anyway, assuming future energy inflation at 10 percent per year, first year at $3.50 per gallon gas, the price after ten years would be $8.25 per gallon. At 18 MPG a decade of driving (2500 miles per year) would cost $7748.

Here are some decade fuel cost estimates, assuming 10 percent per year inflation, starting from $3.50 per gallon. The cumulative decade inflation linear-scales against MPG and miles driven per year, so given a decade cost at one MPG rate, simple ratios give the decade cost of any other MPG. Also, if a fella drives 10,000 miles per year rather than 2500, the fuel costs would be 4X as big for any given MPG.

18 MPG = $7748

30 MPG = $4649 (a real efficient mid-size conventional auto)

40 MPG = $3486 (a hybrid slightly larger than a shoebox)

50 MPG = $2789 (a shoebox-sized hybrid)

Now I haven't researched electric efficiencies. Ball-parking estimate using numbers Monkeylizard gave for a Leaf all-electric. He said 138 miles on a 22 KWH battery charge, but dunno if that is the 22 KWH you feed the vehicle from the wall socket, or whether you have to feed it more juice from the wall socket to top off the battery to 22 KWH after charging losses. For sake of simplicity, am assuming it will run 138 miles after you feed it 22 KWH of TVA juice--

My latest Chatt Electric Power Board bill, dividing the billed amount by the KWH, gives $0.100875 per KWH. They probably have some fixed charges and fees in there and so maybe the rate slightly changes per KWH depending on how much one uses (given a mix of fixed and variable charges). Anyway, at that rate it would cost 398.55 KWH to drive 2500 miles in the year, So one year of driving at current rate ought to be $40.20. Assuming a 10 percent per year electric rate price inflation, a decade of driving 2500 miles per year would cost $641.

If adaptive circuits for charging a vehicle from solar panels didn't cost an arm and a leg, and assuming fairly low battery self-discharge rate, and assuming I don't have to replace an expensive battery every 4 years whether I drive much or not-- It might be feasible to buy enough solar panels to run the vehicle for "in the ballpark of" $641. Some dealers currently sell 200+ watt panels a little north of a dollar per watt, so 500 watts of panels could be racked up on the garage roof or in the yard near the garage for $641 if you DIY install. The typical panel guarantee is 20 to 30 years, so after a decade you would have broke even and started "saving" money. If energy inflation turns out higher than 10 percent per year, the breakeven would be reached sooner. But if energy inflation turns out lower than 10 percent per year then the breakeven point would take longer than 10 years.

Because it scales (somewhat) linearly, then if a fella drives 10,000 miles per year he might pay $2564 to TVA for 10 years electric driving, and he can also install 2000 watts of panels for that kind of money, so he might have equally good odds breaking even in a decade or so. On the other hand, assuming they start selling electric cars in the same price range as hybrids, that $3486 you would have spent feeding a hybrid for 10 years at 2500 miles per year would buy a heck of a solar array. Or if you drive 10,000 miles per year, the $13,944 you would have fed the hybrid over 10 years would buy a big old solar array sho nuff.

Not trying to prove anything, just thinking about the aspects-- The problem with amortizing a solar system for my house, is that after you buy the panels you ain't even warmed up on spending that money. Gotta buy batteries, inverters, extra house wiring, etc. Usually a solar-oriented discrete transfer switch, just the raw part unmounted in a box, seems to go for hundreds of dollars for some reason, even though the equivalent amperage main disconnect breaker fer yer normal house wiring is comparatively cheap as dirt. So if the electric car companies are wise enough to make it "relatively cheap" to hook up panels to the cars, then it might be a lot easier to break-even charging a car, than trying to break-even with residential solar? I read that at least some of the car battery arrays are rather high voltage, so unless the factories were to churn out a standard mass-produced power semiconductor device to buck DC up to what those batteries want to see, then it would be more expensive because you would have to at least add an inverter to the car-charging system. And if the electric car refuses to charge on anything less than 15 amps 110 VAC, then you would also need a battery system to "save up" several days power so you could drive 15 amps into the car for a few hours every few days. So the breakeven could vary drastically depending on whether the car companies design and offer "alternate off the shelf charge controllers" that will slow-charge direct from a solar array.

Edited October 16, 2012 by Lester Weevils