Featured Will Piston Engines Get Clobbered by Electrics?

that would be a new thing for prius drivers

 

In the US, would guess ICE has another ~10 years before EV is > 50% new sales and another ~20 years when ICE sales are < 10%. Wouldn't mind seeing the transition happen faster.

 

Make the new car work as good as the old car and we'll be all over it.

 

Today, it is cost, though there is a company doing PHEV conversions of commercial trucks that uses a micro-turbine as the range extender. It is much easier to adapt it to any fuel; whether gasoline, diesel, CNG, propane, etc. than a piston engine, while maintaining its efficiency.

But @The Electric Me question was hypothetical. We have the piston engine today because it is low tech. If something like the turbine had been conceived a century ago, material and manufacturing science wasn't yet able to make it possible. So the piston engine for cars now has a centruy's worth of advancement and investment in its manufacture and refueling infrastructure.

The question was what would you choose for cars with today's technology level, and if the piston engine didn't have that 100 years of first comer advantage?

I'd choose electric with a range extender using renewable fuel when required. An Al-air battery can work in that job for most personal vehicles. Otherwise, a microturbine, or a rotary if the first still proves to be too costly. Both have a high power to weight ratio, mean more vehicle space for the cabin, cargo, or battery. They also are smooth running; less vibrations to intrude on the passengers. In time, non-hydrogen fueled fuel cells may work out.

And nobody* actually allows the battery to fully charge to 100%, or discharge to 0%.

*Tesla's higher charge option may hit 100%, but they also spell out repeated use is bad for the battery.

 

I'm waiting for repair infrastructure to be available. The kinds of things you take for granted with an ICE car or you research if it is a new model. Technician training and experience. Parts availability. Widespread dealer or service network. Even with a Prius I had one bout of unusual failure which took 4 trips to a local dealer and 4 days for parts arrival. Prior first year of issue vehicles were much worse experiences.

Nearest Tesla service 50+ miles. Nearest Kia about 40. Nearest Toyota 2.

 

Post #13, I read it differently

 

I we don't use enough gas we will have to pay the big oil companies so they can stay in business. What about the petro dollar.

 

Bolded the relevant bit

When the piston engine won out, BEVs of the day were short range with no fast charging. The magnets and batteries were still primitive. The level level knowledge also meant things like a microturbine simply couldn't be built.

 

There were outside forced working on the development of electric vehicles back in the early days. Not all electric vehicles used batteries like the street cars many cities had. Street car companies were bought up and replaced with city buses that eventually went to diesel engines. I remember in my hometown getting stuck behind a diesel city bus.

 

Piston? agreed .... combustion? A new Airbus is configurable for up to (& over) 800 passengers. Burning 9 gallons of fuel per mile - you have better efficiency than a Prius, on an uncomfortable fully loaded flight.

for now (although we are in the infant stages of electric flight) the ONLY way to move large masses of people - especially transcontinental, It Is by burning fossil fuel)
.

 

FCA Fined $77 Million For Missing U.S. CAFE Fuel Economy Target | Carscoops

 

it seems like that would be true, only thing is, many utility companies require massive "demand fees" when Chargers can pull 50kW - 100kW & more, because this typically requires a much larger Transformer, and you can be sure that a convenience store or a photo kiosk or a coffee shop doesn't want to pay that massive up-front charge, just to bring in a few extra coffee customers. Dealerships & big malls/shopping centers are already running those big demand fees so they are only paying the cost of the extra electricity.
.

 

Blind doesn't only apply to the un-sighted. Lots of battery pack abused EVs are being pre-maturely sold all the time.

 

When you charge an EV to 100%, it isn't actually going to 100%...it is some value more like 80 or 85%, depended on how the car maker programmed it and what kind of allowance they are making for warranty claims. Same for the low value.

But I'm not sure what your point is? That are are some dumb people out there?

Mike

 

I was referring to an earlier time of BEVs. Back before Cadillac introduced the electric starter for ICE cars. Until then, EVs were preferred because they didn't require upper body strength to start like an ICE, or took time to build pressure, like a steam car.

The only model of BEV seeing capacity loss in the battery from abuse, in meaningful numbers, is the Leaf, and that is because of Nissan's poor cooling system design, not the users.

 

really? Lots? Do you have a link?
.

 

Can you provide a link/document that specifies this cost for a particular location?

 

But ... Something like the new camry hybrid engine is 41% efficient and is easy to scale up and should maintain that efficiency on any mix of gasoline, ethanol, methanol, lng etc if you do some of the intake valving tricks of mazda and fiat. A micro-turbine has lower efficiency and needs more of a battery buffer (i.e. a more powerful battery is required in a phev). Cummins has some very good designs for lng and diesel, and there is mazda's spark initiated hcci that promises to be both more efficient and produce lower pollution before pollution control devices which may allow for less expensive devices. CNG has pretty much lost the fuel battle for transportation as low cost at home compressors have not been produced, and larger vehicles seem to require the smaller tanks of liquifying the natural gas.

Let's say we took some of the tricks of ford's 1L 3 cylinder, nissan's 1.5L, nissan's 3 cylinder race engine, mazda's skyactiv, and the toyota 2L dynamic force. Engine, pollution control, fuel tank and fuel would be about 120 kg (265 lbs) for a flex fuel 3 cyl 1.5L 110 hp normally aspirated (di+pi) 41% efficient engine that can be mass produced at a fairly low cost. A microturbine will weigh less but can't get close to the efficiency. Need more power, make it 4 cylinder and turbocharge, or 6cyl turbo if that is not enough. Want it smaller with faster warm up use a iron block like ford's 1L. A 2L 4 cyclinder turbo should be able to be built at around 43% efficiency if we take the best tech.

I would say that the rotary is a piston engine, just with different shaped chambers and pistons. It can't get close to the efficiency of the best piston engines even with a huge amount of r&d. The problem with micro turbines is low torque and warm up time so there needs to be a much better transmission probably hybrid with a battery buffer and electric motor to buffer and assist. Chrysler tried the first, jaguar tried the second, and both decided pistons work better ;-) More development for transportation and sure it might work for lower cost range extender, but I would expect at least a decade of development and it would be less efficient (not as important in an extender) but perhaps lighter with lower costs.

The piston engine has a lot of life left in it. Use biomethanol or biogas converted to biomethanol and its reusable. If there is excess renewables these can split water to hydrogen which can be combined with more electricity and co2 to create methanol. Existing processes can easily convert this to gasoline or diesel or aviation fuel if needed, or flex fuel can use it directly. Of course it is less expensive today to use natural gas or coal as feedstock to create fossil fuel based methanol.

I can definitely see in 10 years most inexpensive cars that use inexpensive fuels still being piston based with no plug. For higher performance or luxury will be phev with piston range extenders and bevs.

 

quicky Google can be your friend

EV Owners Slapped With Hefty Charging Fees During Peak Demand

& in some areas / some seasons demand fees aren't just 4 figures - but into 5 figures .... even before pulling a single watt hour.
.

 

'information and technology that exists today'