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The innovation in designing electric cars is taking place in India, not in the US

California

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India has a huge need to reduce its carbon emissions because the air is unbreathable in the cities, and has a greater interest in ultralight economy cars compared to the US.

It looks like the the development of the electric car may evolve faster there than here.

Yes. They could. So they did.
 

California

Charter Member
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Good article Chris. Sounds like something your daughter would do.
Bone
Bonehead, my kids *are* amazing. Can you tell I'm a proud poppa? :biggrin: She's BTDT.

The guy on the right was one of her dorm buddies in her soph year at Berkeley. He has visited our home here a couple of times. His dad is a college math professor and the kid is probably a professor by now. Or working on his Doctorate in stuff we can't even imagine. It was his interest in India where his grandparents emigrated from that started Daughter's interest in going to India for her semester abroad.

The picture shows the experimental solar car he and his Enginering buddies built as a class project for some national competition. My daughter went to the trials in Mohave desert with them as support crew during one Easter break and had some other minor involvement in the project.

This team didn't win, but it is valuable for future design engineers to get some hands-on experience as along with the book learning.

02170019Navtej'sSolarCar.jpg
 

fogtender

Now a Published Author
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Ya, I read that also. But I would bet that the solar input percentage is in the single digits. If not less.

Where are they getting the 'majority' of their power ?

By the looks of it, peddling....
 

fogtender

Now a Published Author
Site Supporter
India has a huge need to reduce its carbon emissions because the air is unbreathable in the cities, and has a greater interest in ultralight economy cars compared to the US.

It looks like the the development of the electric car may evolve faster there than here.

Yes. They could. So they did.

I would love to see an electric car come on the market that was usable to where it could compete with gas/diesel engines directly, but they have neither the range or the seasonal ability to preform. In the cold of winter, the batteries will lose much of their power, not to mention the ability to keep the passengers warm with out using massive amounts of power to supply heat or a gas fired heater, which defeats the reason for having a electric car.

But I don't see it in the next bunch of years. The cost to buy one is still out of range for the average person/family, and if they did start to sell them with the current technology, they would over tax the already limited power grids in a lot of areas. The coal power plants would just replace the CO2 emissions instead of the current cars. Not a very good trade off and nobody wants Nuclear power or hydro in their valley and wind turbines overlooking their house, it all has it's own detractors.

Even the current batteries that they use are expensive to buy and just as bad to get rid of and need replacing every three to five years at up wards of $5,000.00 a shot or so.

The solar powered ones look like some promise, but they are only good in limited regions with direct sunlight, but again are limited in their output.

I guess in the mean time... "Drill baby, Drill"....
 

daedong

New member
Foggy I actually agree with you! Smaller more efficient engines in my view is the best way to go. All the so called alternatives at this point time are generally impractical.
 

fogtender

Now a Published Author
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Foggy I actually agree with you! Smaller more efficient engines in my view is the best way to go. All the so called alternatives at this point time are generally impractical.

Cool, I knew you would come to your senses...:whistling:

If I recall correctly, it takes about 18 HP to keep a full sized car doing about 55 MPH down the highway.

There was a guy I met in Ohio in the early 70's that used a flywheel, that weighed about five hundred pounds (or more) that a small engine ran and kept spinning the flywheel at a high RPM. The engine by itself didn't have the HP to make the car take off and zip up to the speed limit, but the energy stored in this spinning flywheel did. He used a regular Transmission and had a belt drive to it like a snowmachines clutch, the belt would change on the clutches to meet the rpm demand.

To make a long story short, he had a working model in a Cadillac car, and it took off about as fast as a regular car, it just got 80+ miles to the gallon because of the smaller engine. If you were in it, you wouldn't know anything was different other than a bit of a whine from under the hood, but that could have been addressed.

I would assume that if you had to go up long grades, the energy would bleed off the flywheel and you would be down to the twenty HP or so the engine put out, creeping you up over the top of the mountain.

He died shortly after I met him and rode in the car, and never heard anything about it after that.
 

California

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Ya, I read that also. But I would bet that the solar input percentage is in the single digits. If not less.

Where are they getting the 'majority' of their power ?
Presumably wherever Indian electricity comes from. Their power generation is part of the bad air quality there.

That project that Friedman referenced, Indiaclimate solutions.com is leading-edge experimental. They are searching for alternate solutions. As India and China industrialize, their air pollution will become unbearable if they use as much carbon based fuel as we do percapita. The number of cars on the road is growing like mad as more people work their way up into the middle class.

They already have a preference for tiny cars and India has a warm climate, so their evolution in automobiles can be a lot more fuel efficient compared to what we need.

Click through on some of the links on that site. There's a lot of interesting stuff.

front5.jpg
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Caption on the second photo: "Valence Energy and SA Habitat are working together to design a smart solar microgrid at the Palm Meadows housing project in Hyderabad."

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I see bright and involved kids like these Indian engineering students, and I'm optimistic for the future. They are working on solutions that fit their culture and conditions. I think it is fascinating to watch India bootstrap itself up into a modern society. Hopefully they can sidestep some of the mistakes we have made, such as 3-ton single occupant commuter vehicles.
 

Melensdad

Jerk in a Hawaiian Shirt & SNOWCAT Moderator
Staff member
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Curious as to what they are using to recharge with, coal or hydro ?

Partly solar, per the article.
Partly solar but probably a lot of coal.

India and China are both generating much of their electricity with coal, they both seem to be using more and more of it. Both of them have carbon foot prints that have grown by leaps and bounds over the past decade or two and both have been largely blamed for the dramatic increase in greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.

Not sure, but I believe both were partially or completely exempted by the Kioto Accord that the US considered to be unfair. Oddly enough, the US has held reasonably stable with its greenhouse gas emissions. Go figure.
 

California

Charter Member
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India and China are both generating much of their electricity with coal, they both seem to be using more and more of it. Both of them have carbon foot prints that have grown by leaps and bounds over the past decade or two and both have been largely blamed for the dramatic increase in greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.
Exactly. I used the term 'air pollution' because I expect some of the readers here don't believe in the greenhouse gasses/global warming model.

Look at the climate in pictures #3 and 4, especially the gloomy shadows in #3. In India's cities the sky never clears, smog covers the cities perpetually like shown here. Any step they can make toward better energy efficiency overall has a direct effect on their local health, and as most of us believe, on countries on the opposite side of the world also. Second, we will soon be in competition with them for portable motor fuels. The less they use, the more for us.

These tiny electric cars aren't the whole solution of course. They are simply one way to lessen global impact as Indian families move up to the middle class, become mobile, and start to use more carbon-based energy on a mass scale.
 
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