June 9, 2008 by Rob.

I’ve been resisting feeling the pull to comment more and more about non-EV topics on this blog.  To be true to this blog’s content and (imagined) readership, I’ve decided to start TribalGrid, a new blog, focused on broader social energy and sustainability topics.

I’m re-coining the term “social energy” to describe technology and attitudes that help people see energy as a limited community resource.  I believe that solving problems in our near-term future will require a deep change in public thinking about how we consume energy.

The blog has been in stealth mode since Earth Day so there are already some fresh rants for your enjoyment.

Posted in Commentary, Alternate Fuels, Rants, Blogroll, Storyline, EV Tech | No Comments »

June 9, 2008 by Rob.

A friend sent over a link about a car that runs on air so I thought I’d throw up the link and provide some color commentary.  The link is from a PBS “future car” series that must have run out of money - each hour segment rehashed the same 20 minutes of interviews interleaved with 90’s era futuristic dissolves.

The compressed air car story broke last year and generates a lot of wild speculation on the EV forums, but is usually considered implausible.  I like the concept, but have to agree with the doubters that the physics required to make it work won’t scale for mass production.  I have not heard much since Tata Motor’s claims of last year.  Like most alternative fuel stories, the primary fuel is green hype.

Here are the doubts raised:

• Compressing gas is inefficient in terms of recoverable energy stored vs. energy input
• Compressing gas stores lots of energy (yeah!) that can dissipate explosively (oops) under many circumstances
• Transferring gas between pressures also transfers lot of heat (thanks Boyle) that must be dealt with
• The safe containers are either heavy or expensive

As a kid, I was very excited about the air car concept.  Although, I was also thinking steam powered cars could be made to work.  As is usually the case, research is the spoiler of many an nerdy adolescent’s entrepreneurial fantasy.

Posted in Alternate Fuels | 2 Comments »

June 9, 2008 by Rob.

Ah, June in Texas - scorching grass and scintillating asphalt mingle with the wheeze of ozone soaked joggers.  What a wonderful time to drive a car without AC.  You all should try it so you can truly appreciate the roadside environment of our fair city.

The RAVolt is letting me know that she’s hot too:

1. The heat is making her batteries thirsty.  Watering today required a full turkey baster squirt of distilled H20 for each cell.  Normal is about 1/2 baster.
2. Even though I only charge during the cool of the night, my charger tripping at “high temperature.” It greets me in the morning with that lovely a beep-beeeep song.  I wish it was smart enough to watch the probe and try again later.
3. My Curtis controller gets hot and decides it can only run at the lower PWM frequency.  That means that I loose 30% of my max power output after 5 minutes at highway speed during day.  Good for the batteries, but slow for my fellow travelers.  As a consolation they could hear that lovely Curtis whine (about 30khz) if they’d just roll down their windows.

Owning a EV in the summer is like being in an opera!  At least I’m not singing the gas pump blues.

Posted in Daily Use | No Comments »