A sin or a success?

[vetran]

[Kurt] wanted an electric car, and always wanted to drive a Porsche. Killing two birds with one stone, he decided to combine these wishes and convert a 2002 Porsche 911 into an electric vehicle.

Porsche 911 made electric - Hack a Day

Already [Kurt] has taken his new ride to 100 mph and done a little bit of range testing that told him he should expect around 40 miles per charge in his new ride.

[LatteLiberal]

[Kurt] wanted an electric car, and always wanted to drive a Porsche. Killing two birds with one stone, he decided to combine these wishes and convert a 2002 Porsche 911 into an electric vehicle.

Porsche 911 made electric - Hack a Day

Already [Kurt] has taken his new ride to 100 mph and done a little bit of range testing that told him he should expect around 40 miles per charge in his new ride.

Most people don't understand that with electric cars you are just moving the pollution from cars to power-stations that provide the electricity for said car.

[DimPrawn]

Fail.

Porsche already do one.

Porsche 356 electric car - Toys - For Kids - Driver

[darmstadt]

Or this:

[d000hg]

Most people don't understand that with electric cars you are just moving the pollution from cars to power-stations that provide the electricity for said car.

Most people who make that point as an attack on electric cars don't realise it's not that simple. The pollution/Joule for a petrol automobile engine and a coal-burning power station will be different, plus you have to factor in efficiency on both sides... losses getting the energy into the battery, relative efficiency of a power station and an engine, etc.

I've not seen either side pushing figures on this... it would be more complex since it would depend on each country's powergrid (% coal, gas, nuclear, wind) but it should be fairly easy to do an approximation.

[vetran]

Most people don't understand that with electric cars you are just moving the pollution from millions of cars with mediocre emissions control that push out emissions concentrated at pedestrian level in Urban areas to power-stations which can have emissions closely controlled and may even have higher efficiency or be totally greenthat provide the electricity for said car.

And that this is an early stage both electric cars and the charging infrastructure are in their infancy.

FTFY

[d000hg]

I think I already said that.

[vetran]

I think you already said that.But I love this FTFY - plus sometimes its helpful to repeat the users words back slowly with corrections it helps understanding if they have made a really stupid comment

FTFY

[d000hg]

So have you got any ideas about the figures/calculations I suggest, to back up [y]our points? It seems to me likely that even a coal power station is less dirty per joule than a petrol engine due to effects of scale and distribution, but it's only a guess.

[VectraMan]

This bloke did it to an S2000:

Honda S2000 Electric Vehicle Conversion

The biggest problem of course is the huge weight of all those batteries, which goes some way to defeating the object of the exercise.

(And as an aside, don't you just love websites that are layed out with a narrow strip of text down the middle of your widescreen monitor).