i usually have 3 and i’m the 2nd type of person (though it’s not that healthy)

8 am breakfast

3pm lunch

9pm a snack.

David Kelly

Give the EV’s and its batteries a good commercial run of 10 years and i think most of the issues what we are disscussing here will be eleminated. better designed batteries, electric motors, and a clever grid system catering for your vehicle will all take its course. But with only one condition, and that is the market forces must come into play. ie competition from car and battery manufacturers plus the ever increasing gas prices. I am sure this is what has just started happening now.

The future looks bright in that sense.

Fast recharging stations at places like markets, restaurants, and other places of business will work well for commuters and those driving more than the average 40 miles a day. Couple the fast charger with a solar powered shaded parking structure and a power purchase agreement, and electric powered transportation will become economical and practical.

A power purchase agreement allows any excess solar generated electricity to be sold, at market rate or less, to the electric vehicle charging station host business or parking developer.

We can do this, it just takes the will.

First of all the only kind of car that is credible is an
ALL ELECTRIC car a fully mature technology kept
down by the Detroit/Oil mafia.

Even without the superfast charging EV’s are far better than today’s vehicles in so many ways.
As for charge times a little common sense tells you
that it is no big deal to have regular fast charges
in car parks at shopping malls, cinemas and
restaurants, places where people spend an hour or
more. The cellls that have been available for years now charge up a good 100 miles plus out of the 300
miles distance of the best batteries. Once in mass production that would increase in capacity every few years. Solar power on your roof can run your car off
sunshine or you can use the grid.

Now here comes this super super fast new charging
technology and that is even more fabulous. This new charging system could also be used to power up en masse pre-charged batteries in factories in North Africa where massive solar contrating power projects
are planned in the Sahara. While yes there would be a pipeline to Europe sending over electricity one should not put all the eggs in a single basket. People could also buy a precharged power box that would slot into a connection in their home for powering their house or apartment for one month or six weeks. These could be at first sent from the richest source of solar North Africa on a new generation of
eco-friendly cargo ships then later recharged either
by a service at your local supermarket or constantly
reboosted by a home solar system. We need to stop
both nuclear and hyrdogen as both are simply a reaffirmation of the gangster regime of the current world order.

Howard in Manchester

According to the company’s web site, “Epyon wants to become a leader in providing ultra fast charging solutions for electric vehicles used in critical business processes to enable clean and reliable electric transportation in a 24-7 economy.”

Well goodluck Epyon.

or installing this in parking garages/lots and pay like a parking meter, so we could eventually discontinue the need of a petrol startion in favor of these (eventually cheaper) devices as they can be places ANYWHERE a car can be parked that has access to some form of energy wether it be city power grid or remotely by wind, solar,geothermal,hydro,etc

How do you know tom c gray and kerry bradshaw are the same person and that he usually comments under the name Kent Beuchert? I don’t understand how a Google search could confirm this.

Tom C Gray,

The article says that this company intends to use some kind of energy storage technology, meaning that their device has a lower instantaneous requirement over a longer period of time and then dumps it all into the vehicle battery in the course of 10 minutes. However, by solving that problem, they’ve created another problem–degraded well-to-wheel efficiency. If energy must be transfered into and out of their energy storage medium before it charges the car’s battery, there’s a certain amount of energy lost in the process, thus lowering the overall efficiency of the vehicle. This is really important and shouldn’t be overlooked in an era of energy decline. Having said that, the vehicle would still have a higher well-to-wheel efficiency than the most efficient available gas or diesel vehicle… also, if the system is cheap enough, it might be a good idea for people who are really going to need that fast charge here and there, as long as their mainstay is the slow, overnight charge. Also, it would be best if the Epyon device draws power slowly overnight, thus smoothing troughs in the grid, increasing overall grid efficiency and decreasing costs to the vehicle owner.

Having said that, a fast charge is absolutely not a requirement for the success of electric vehicles since the vast majority of round trips are 50 miles or less and people will largely use slow, overnight charging. The main EV R&D focus now should be on getting battery costs down and reducing vehicle weight without compromising safety, quality, performance or cost. Every time gas prices go up, electric vehicles become more economical. In some parts of the world with double the US gas prices, they’re already at parity with gas or diesel vehicles on a cash-flow basis.

Despite my almost fetish-level of interest in electric propulsion, I feel the need to point out an extremely important point: Electric vehicles are A solution but not THE solution. They are a few rungs down the priority ladder after these much higher priorities, which are cheaper and also have the side effect of an increase in quality of life:

Re-localization of our economy: Food and water and other goods sourced, used and recycled locally–eliminating the need for transport as much as possible.

Intelligent city planning, which reduces the need to travel in the first place and encourages walking and bicycling.

Mass transit, where appropriate

Reviving our pathetic rail system

Let’s not forget that roads require an enormous amount of energy to build and maintain. I don’t know what the exact numbers are, but given the fact that roads are often literally made of petroleum and involve the use of steel, and concrete (both energy-intensive materials) and gravel, you can be sure that it is a sh*tload of embodied energy on top of the energy used to transport and operate heavy equipment for road construction and maintenance. Because of that maintenance requirement, a road that’s just sitting there uses a certain number of gallons per mile, more or less depending on how much it’s used and what kind of vehicles are using it.
Given that much of our existing highway infrastructure is now in disrepair, we have a great opportunity to get rid of a lot of it instead of rebuilding it at an enormous environmental and financial cost to society.

Let’s keep all this in mind when we’re discussing electric vehicles, shall we?