Why not drop the other shoe and have an all electric volt?

[Ken Fry-2]

Hi Jack,  
I agree that, ultimately, small battery packs and ubiquitous fast charge
stations is a great approach.  The battery swapping approach (Better
Place) can only work if you have agreement on one or two battery pack
sizes - and such agreement will be impossible to get, other than for
test programs, fleets, etc...  That does not lead to mass market
acceptance.  Obviously, the very last thing a vehicle like mine needs is
a battery pack suitable for a midsized car: efficiency would plummet
from hauling around excess weight, and aerodynamics would suffer from
the packaging requirements.  
 
Today, there are 10C-charge-capable batteries (albeit at a high price).
That's 6 minutes to a full charge, so if we stop for 3 minutes when the
battery is half discharged, we'd have completely acceptable convenience.
(Of course, if the stations are standardized -- at let's say 480 VAC
600A -- then each vehicle would need a hefty onboard charger to do the
rectification, control, etc. - but the weight and cost would be
manageable, no doubt.)  Of course, we don't have these fast charge
stations, and no one wants to install them without a guarantee of usage.
Thus, the requirement for PHEVS to lead the way.  When you have 300,000
people saying "Gee, it would be nice to just charge up my Volt at
Starbucks, rather that at a dirty smelly gas station" then a few fast
charge stations will go in.. and then some more...  
 
My test mule, (the white vehicle) is, as you imply, a death trap. It
exists to be able to test small, cheap systems that are otherwise
functionally the same as those that will be on the pre-production
prototype.  I'll end up with several thousand miles on the test mule -
but I'll be careful - at least it is a little safer than a motorcycle.

 
The real pre-production prototype, which will be a two-seater rather
than single-seater, and which will have the external side impact
protection system, will do better in the federal and IIHS crash tests
than the typical small car - particular in side impact, where all cars
are relatively poor because they have no crush space.  (A recent IIHS
report showed that three full-sized pickups actually did worse than the
Honda Fit and Toyota Yaris in side impact tests, in which greater mass
should help: engineering counts, in this case even more than mass
counts.) The preproduction prototype will be the vehicle used in the
Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize - and one of their requirements
is that you can demonstrate that the vehicle will be safe, in both
active and passive senses.
 
The pre-production prototype will also far exceed the current and
proposed rollover roof strength requirements, which, in my view, are
simply unacceptably lenient. (Even my POC death trap substantially
exceeds the proposed standards.)  
 
I should put up a size comparison drawing on my site.  The preproduction
prototype will have about the same dimensions as a Corvette:  it's more
than 3 feet longer that a Smart Car, about a foot longer than a Mini.
So it has adequate crush distances front and rear - but also, unlike any
other car, at the sides.  
 
Re 70 mph crashes: even 35 mph frontal crash tests put occupants near
the limits of survivability in both large and small cars.  In side
impacts (at 31 mph), G forces at the hip can be 100 or more.  Although a
Smart Car (and many other cars) can appear (in web videos) to survive a
70 mph barrier crash with the safety cage still more or less intact, no
occupant can survive such a crash, and none of the car's systems are
designed for such impacts.  (Truth be told, cars are designed to the
crash tests, just as they are designed to the EPA tests.  There are some
small exceptions, with Volvo, for example, having gone beyond the
requirements, especially in the early days, but in cases where the
standards are lax, as in rollover protection, the manufacturers are lax
too.)
 
You're right about peak hp requirements vs steady state requirements.
Plug-in hybrids have an advantage over non-plug-in series hybrids (with
smaller battery packs) in being able to sustain peak hp longer.  The
Volt is fairly close to an optimum, erring, perhaps, on the side of the
engine being a little larger than really necessary. (The Volt's 40 mile
range can take it over one heck of a big mountain.)
 
GM has taken the seemingly odd stance with the Volt that it is truly an
electric vehicle that just happens to carry around a generator.  That
leads people to think that once the batteries are dead you have to wait
around to have the generator charge them.  The reason GM has taken this
stance is for CAFE and mileage reporting reasons - the Volt looks far
more efficient than the Prius, if it is measured as an EV, because of a
6.67:1 advantage given to alternative fuel vehicles in the CAFE rules.
The volt is obviously really a series PHEV, and has been used as the
most-cited reference for that term for a couple years... it will be
interesting to see if GM can have its cake and eat it too.  The actual
efficiency of the Volt, driving from New York to Chicago, will be lower
than Prius efficiency.  Driven locally, it depends upon where the power
comes from.  A fluidized bed coal-fired plant is 33% efficient, so in
places where most of the power is from coal, today's Prius is perhaps a
tick or two more efficient (and creates less CO2) than the Volt would,
running in its electric mode.  Where most of the power is created from
hydro, etc. the Volt would, of course, be far ahead.  
 
Although I am no big fan of GM, I'd hate to see their Volt trounced in
the marketplace by a production plug-in Prius.  In a leap of faith, I
recently owned a Saturn... and it had major safety-related failures -
such as the power steering failing repeatedly.  Many times it would fail
to start for causes that are well-documented on the web by hundreds of
people with the same problem. The car was truly a POS.  GM drove me back
to Honda.  That is not, in any way shape or form, the fault of the
people on the GM production lines, has little to do with union
contracts, and has everything to do with arrogant, short-sighted upper
management, throwing a once great company down the tubes.  
 
Sorry for the rant, Ken
                                             
>>> Hi Ken, looks like a cool car/scooter!
>Agree with your analysis mostly.  As I've said many times, the way >to
make EV's affordable and mass-market is to use small batteries, >as they
are the most expensive part of EV.  If we can have >ubiquitous
fast-charge stations, it would work today for most >cities.  For
long-distance, you must remember that 10-15hp works on >flat ground, try
going over the grapevine with a 50cc engine.
>I'd like to see some evidence of the crash worthiness at 70mph of >that
little car.
>Cheers, Jack
 
 
 
 
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