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"I think these electric racers call themselves AMPHEADS?"
Yeah, John. It was a motorcycle that first drew my attention to electrics. Years ago, some guy in a magazine built a bike for daily commuting using a full size bike, some rather heavy lead-acids and a surplus starter motor from a military jet. I have an old CB750F Honda that has triple disc brakes and would make a good conversion. My wife has a relative in California that rebuilds aircraft starters and generators, if I ever get that far. Bike toys are easier to store than electric cars, something that is getting to be a problem around here.
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Clay
The History Channel footage spokesman said that Lotus showed them how to design and build bonded chassis, so I took it that they are in process of developing in house.(??)
I don't think they are calculating battery cost in as an operational cost when they say .02 per mile.
But I think battery cost will not be excessive in the future. My wife recently bought a Toyota Prius hybrid and the '04-'07 N-MH battery has been warranteed for 8 yrs or 100,000 miles, 10yrs/150k in '08. But Toyota engineers expect it to last for about 15 years with the US software. The coming lithium-ion battery will be much better, with more capacity and less weight. The Prius is a pleasure to drive by the way, quiet with more rear footroom than a Camry and lots of standard bells and whistles (
http://www.motortrend.com/oftheyear/car/112_04_coy_win ). She's getting about 47 mpg in the city, no road trip yet.
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It would be interesting if they ever came up with enough regenerative storage for our locomotives, hybrids without batteries.
The last lead unit I just came home with was #5824 an ES44AC (
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/sho...aspx?id=787427 ) and (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GE_Evolution_Series ).
These 44's put 4400 hp into 6 electric traction motors... but when they are set to dynamic braking, they regenerate nearly as much amperage... which is dissipated in giant "toaster" grids and blown as heat out the top. The waste in one 200 mile trip could probably heat a few of our houses for a year. They suddenly really spark when a grid occasionally suddenly fries. The braking is good enough to momentarily slide the wheels on these 400,000 pound machines, until traction control does it's anti-lock thing.
The AC (alternating current) solid state revolution saves a lot of maintainence since the DC (direct current) motors all used high maintainence brushes. Locomotive DC amperage hits as high as 1500 amps per motor at several hundred volts.
Siemans (
http://www.siemens.com/index.jsp?sdc...327903ps7t6uz1 ), from Germany, provided the first solid state devices, I saw in testing, to EMD (SD70MAC's) to produce AC traction motors that will handle these extreme current and voltage levels.
This is the technology that Toyota has, and others that follow, will use to produce first small autos and, I assume, eventually hybrid consumer trucks capable of pulling 5th wheels and car trailers. Future electric transmissions will be better, stronger and cheaper and total pulling power will be greater. Part of the efficient hybrid technology has been around more than 50 years.
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Tesla Motors on TV
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