Internal combustion engine Essay Example for Free

Internal combustion engine Essay ?1. The seven suspects who may have contributed to the failure of GM’s EV1 program are: a. Customers (guilty) a. i. Consumers wanted a three hundred mile range and eighty-five mile per hour speed on their electric cars but this was not plausible when running off of a battery. a. ii. When customers compare cars they don’t care much about the environmental risks they only care about the price, the miles per gallon, and the mileage range. Customers had a difficult time seeing the difference between regular cars and electric cars so there was not enough demand. b. Battery Technology (not guilty). b. i. Batteries were too weak to make the car go as far as consumers were hoping so they bought the less expensive gasoline vehicles that could go the desired distance. c. Oil Companies (guilty) c. i. Oil companies got very involved with electric cars because if everyone were to switch to battery operated vehicles, there would no longer being a large demand for gasoline. d. Car Companies (guilty) d. i. The GM car didn’t seem to be catching on and there did not seem to see a profit in electric or hybrid cars so they didn’t see it as effective to keep manufacturing the car. e. Government (guilty) e. i. Government officials did not approve of the electric car so they did nothing to assist General Motors in selling it. e. ii. President Carter supported clean energy but President Nixon cared so little about clean energy he had the solar panels taken off the roof of the White House. f. C. A. R. B. California Air Resources Board (guilty). f. i. Lloyd was elected chairman of the board four months before they got rid of the electric car and he persisted to demolish it. g. Hydrogen Fuel Cells (guilty) g. i. Hydrogen Fuel Cells seemed more appealing to consumers because Shell stations could provide hydrogen. g. ii. Hydrogen Fuel Cells had General Motors beat because their cars could travel 100-125 miles per fill up while the EV could only travel about 75 miles. Also, hydrogen cars have about three to four times more energy than a car running on batteries. 2. The suspect I feel is most responsible is the consumers because they only look at the simple facts; they couldn’t care less whether or not their car is destroying the environment. Consumers only care about the price, mileage, and miles per gallon of a vehicle which all lacked on the EV because car companies saw it fair to lose a bit of the â€Å"basic car features† in order to improve the environment. 3. The nickel metal hydride battery enabled the GM EV1 to have a real world range of 250 km and the Chevrolet S10 achieved a range of 110 to 130 km with full charge and can usually last for years on end depending on how many times you have to recharge the full battery. Today, nickel metal hydride batteries are commonly used for cameras, camcorders, cell phones, pagers, medical instruments, etc. An interview published last year in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists said that there was going to be a new approach to photovoltaic thin-film production that would allow factories to make enough solar panels in a year to produce at least one gigawatt of electricity annually—roughly the scale of a nuclear power plant—at the price of coal. The argument for thin-film solar panels is that thin-film solar can actually be cheaper than one dollar a watt, low price solar panels are opening up new markets (which could lead to a surge in demand), and the fastest, cheapest way to meet that demand could be building thin-film solar factories, since you can build those factories for a third as much as silicon solar panel factories. Although this seems beneficial, the main arguments against thin-film solar panels are the cost of everything else that goes into the final cost of solar power (including installation costs, which are now higher than the cost of panels themselves), you can save much more money if higher efficiency solar panels are put in because the company would have to buy less panels, and thin-film solar panels are actually less efficient than silicon ones. Because of the strong points of the argument, I do not think that putting in thin-film solar panels is worth the trouble when time and money could be saved with more efficient panels. 4. The goal of Plug in America is to get Americans to switch to a car that uses clean, affordable, domestic electricity for some or all of its energy. The best way to reduce carbon emissions is to utilize the ever cleaner, greener, more renewable grid to power transportation. Only grid-rechargeable cars can attain the end goal of zero-emissions and ensure fuel price stability. Plug in America works with General Motors, Nissan, and Mitsubishi all of which sell electric vehicles. The main Plug in America is based out of San Francisco, California. Around 2005, all of the major automakers planned to call back their leased electric vehicles (which were only available in California) and crush them. A group of drivers formed to stop them and wanted to buy the cars they had been driving. They were unsuccessful with the GM EV-1; this was the subject of the movie Who Killed The Electric Car. But GM did not crush the S-10 pickups, and the protestors saved half of the Toyota RAV4-EVs. Plug In America then kept up a continuous campaign to convince automakers that there is demand for electric vehicles, and that they should build them instead of crushing them. There are now several electric vehicles in the marketplace, and by the end of 2012 there will be dozens of models. Plug In America no longer needs to protest; instead they now consult with the automakers and offer training to auto dealers. 5. The newest electric cars are: a. The 2013 Smart fortwo electric car couple/convertible a. i. This car is available in select dealers across the country. a. ii. This car gets 122 miles per gallon equivalent (1 gallon of gasoline=33. 7 kW-hr) in cities and 93 miles per gallon equivalent on highways.a. iii. Over a five-year span, someone with a Smart fortwo electric car would save about $8,750 because the annual fuel cost is only $600. a. iv. The driving range of this car in is 68 miles. b. The 2013 Scion iQ EV b. i. There will be approximately 90 iQ EVs available for fleet and car-sharing applications at select dealers across the country. b. ii. This car gets 138 miles per gallon equivalent (1 gallon of gasoline=33. 7 kW-hr) in cities and 105 miles per gallon equivalent on highways. b. iii. Over a five-year span, someone with a Scion iQ EV would save about $9,250 because the annual fuel cost is only $500. b. iv. The driving range of this car in is 38 miles. c. The 2013 Honda Fit EV c. i. This car is available in California and parts of Oregon c. ii. This car gets 132 miles per gallon equivalent (1 gallon of gasoline=33. 7 kW-hr) in cities and 105 miles per gallon equivalent on highways. c. iii. Over a five-year span, someone with a Honda Fit EV would save about $9,250 because the annual fuel cost is only $500. c. iv. The driving range of this car in is 82 miles. d. The 2013 Fiat 500e d. i. At this time, this car is only available in California. d. ii. This car gets 122 miles per gallon equivalent (1 gallon of gasoline=33. 7 kW-hr) in cities and 108 miles per gallon equivalent on highways. d. iii. Over a five-year span, someone with a Fiat 500e would save about $9,250 because the annual fuel cost is only $500. d. iv. The driving range of this car in is 87 miles. Since the ranges of these electric cars are actually quite good, I would be able to drive an electric car in my daily life. On average, I don’t drive very far but for days I do I think I would need to have a gasoline powered car that can be refilled quickly and easily at a gas station. At night, I would just have to plug my car in so that it could be fully charged in the morning and it would be sufficient enough to get to school and work. 6. The arguments for and against electric cars are: a. One criticism of electric cars is that they often just replace one source of carbon pollution with another. Instead of a combustion engine that burns gasoline, you get a plug-in vehicle that depends on electricity from burning coal. All in all, electric cars still look pretty good in comparison, especially since they’re not burning any gasoline and putting additional carbon in the air, but it looks like it’s not, strictly speaking, true that â€Å"It takes more electricity to drive the average gasoline car 100 miles, than it does to drive an electric car 100 miles. † This probably explains why Nissan abandoned its sticker. The energy comparison still looks positive for electric cars, but the talking point isn’t nearly as neat and clean. b. In order to support large numbers of electric cars there will have to be an infrastructure built where these cars can be recharged. Although, even with charging stations, an electric car can take up to eight hours to fully charge and this is quite the inconvenience for people traveling. The idea of a â€Å"swop† has been presented where the driver gives in their used battery for a battery that is fully charged but doing this could cost the government a lot of money. c. Yes, the batteries that power electric cars (and hybrids, for that matter) can be recycled. For decades, lead-acid batteries powered the few electric vehicles that were on the road. The latest models, with their lighter weight and longer range, use lithium-ion batteries, just like laptops and cell phones. In either case, the batteries that power electric cars can be recycled. When the battery packs in a lithium-ion-powered vehicle are deemed too worn out for driving, they still have up to 80 percent of their charge left. So before they ever get to a recycling center, these batteries are used to prop up the grid, especially alongside energy sources that may not be quite as steady, like wind or solar power. The batteries can store power to help the flow of electricity stay on an even keel rather than ebb and flow with the weather. An electric car battery is costly, but can last as much as 100,000 miles. They usually come with a 10 year or mileage limit warranty. Sources: http://www. greenbatteries. com/nibafa. html#How%20many%20times http://www. pluginamerica. org/ http://www. fueleconomy. gov/feg/evnews. shtml http://www. wlv. ac. uk/default. aspx? page=31209 http://www. howstuffworks. com/can-electric-car-batteries-be-recycled. htm http://www. technologyreview. com/view/512746/dont-count-out-thin-film-solar/