Coast to coast in an Electric car towing a trailer.

westernrvparkowner wrote:
Campgrounds may not be a good choice to recharge Teslas and the like. Campground pedestals and their wiring circuits (and the NEC specifications for those wiring demands) were determined and created by the demands of RVs using those pedestals. The high electrical needs of those rechargers would completely throw those demand computations out the window. Add a couple of rechargers to a loop of campground pedestals being used by RVs and you will likely either trip the main breakers or add to the voltage drop on the loop. This may either greatly inconvenience all the other RVs on that loop or, in the case of voltage drop, damage the components of those RVs.
We are not vehicle refueling stops, we are RV parks. We do not allow recharging of electrical vehicles under any circumstances. We do not have the infrastructure to recharge electric vehicles.
We will not be installing public recharging stations for the simple reason that we don't want to have to entertain someone who is not a guest for the 30 minutes to an hour it would take to recharge their batteries. Those people would be wanting to either use the park's other facilities during that time or maybe just wander around the park, creating a security concern for all the other guests. Plus it has been our very limited experience (very small, statistically invalid sample to be sure) that people wanting to recharge their batteries are not really interested in paying for the service. Had one guy offer us $5.00 in exchange for the three hours it was going to take him to recharge his Tesla. Not interested in that deal at all.

You are always such a downer

Gdetrailer wrote:

rjxj wrote:
They will be all wheel drive with a motor at each wheel with zero loss through a drive train. I have a Rayeo electric outboard motor on a pontoon boat that uses a Briggs & Stratton Etek brushless pancake motor. Four group 27 in series will do 8 mph. It's not powerful enough for a vehicle obviously but it could easily fit in the backside of many wheels. Motors at the wheel will provide anti lock braking, traction control and regenerative braking with only two bearings to wear out. The wheel could become half of the motor for further efficiency. The electric cars of today are still pretty crude compared to what we will have in 10 or 20 years.

Etek

Not a trolling motor :)

There is no such thing as "zero loss".

Electric motors STILL use pretty much the same principals as the early 1890s electric motors.

You have windings made of copper wire, you have iron, you have friction of the bearings and so on.

You can only REDUCE the "loss" but even that has reached the point of no returns there..

Then you add in all the parasitic losses, modern day motors are driven by electronic controllers, there are a lot of losses there.. Then you add in silly comfort things like HEAT, A/C, and stereo..

In reality, the battery IS STILL the weak point.

It is simply a means of "storing" energy, it is a clumsy means of doing so and even that has serious losses.

Building batteries is a DIRTY process, it uses a lot of extremely harmful chemicals not to mention requires considerable amount of metals (some are rather dangerous by themselves), then you have ll the leftover hazardous materials from the build process that must be properly disposed of.

Electric vehicles being touted as "clean" and "renewable" is nothing more than a mirage and smoke screen, there is nothing clean about them..

Then when the battery life is done, you have a large hunk of hazardous material that you you will have to pay to dispose of..

Then you have another problem.. Guess what happens when the manufacturer of your EV decides to discontinue your battery?

Yep, the vehicle becomes JUNK!

There is no set standard for modern EVs and the manufacturer CAN pull the rug right from under you by no longer providing a battery!

Nothing like planned obsolescence of the entire vehicle!

You could have a 3 or 4 yr old vehicle being hauled off to the scrap yard just because nobody makes a replacement battery..

Sounds very green for the manufacturer and the scrapper in the form of cash.. Manufacturer gets to sell another vehicle faster and the scrapper gets to turn over more scrap metal faster..

I don't know. I don't think you can get a dirtier process than what goes on in the oil industry. I have read a bunch of articles debunking the whole "toxic battery" thing. Lead acid batteries are considerably more dangerous but they don't present a problem as they are recycled. I suspect a recycling industry will grow up around the motive battery industry as well. I can't imagine any vehicle manufacturer abandoning a battery process. Toyota still supports batteries from 12 year old priuses. Every automotive manufacturer will be making their bread and butter in electric vehicles in the next twenty years. I don't suspect any want the reputation of abandoning their customers.

Re the hydrogen question. I don't know much about the hydrogen cars but it seems to me (and I'm no expert) it would be harder to get the filling infrastructure in place. Electricity for the most part is in place. Every garage already has a 120 plug and although a 240 volt or fast charger would be nice keep in mind that the vast majority of us EV drivers "fill up" at night at home while we sleep using a 120 volt plug. Angela does most of the miles on ours and she plugs in about three times a week. Obviously we just use ours as a commuter vehicle but that works for a lot of people...obviously not everyone. We will put less miles on ours than we thought as we recently bought a townhouse closer to work but we will still probably put about 6000 miles per year on ours. That will cost me about 160 to 180 bucks in electricity every year. I already bought a jug of washer fluid last year and that should last me a couple years so my maintenance is pre-paid for a year or two...or at least until the jug runs empty. :)

rjxj wrote:
They will be all wheel drive with a motor at each wheel with zero loss through a drive train. I have a Rayeo electric outboard motor on a pontoon boat that uses a Briggs & Stratton Etek brushless pancake motor. Four group 27 in series will do 8 mph. It's not powerful enough for a vehicle obviously but it could easily fit in the backside of many wheels. Motors at the wheel will provide anti lock braking, traction control and regenerative braking with only two bearings to wear out. The wheel could become half of the motor for further efficiency. The electric cars of today are still pretty crude compared to what we will have in 10 or 20 years.

Etek

Not a trolling motor :)

There is no such thing as "zero loss".

Electric motors STILL use pretty much the same principals as the early 1890s electric motors.

You have windings made of copper wire, you have iron, you have friction of the bearings and so on.

You can only REDUCE the "loss" but even that has reached the point of no returns there..

Then you add in all the parasitic losses, modern day motors are driven by electronic controllers, there are a lot of losses there.. Then you add in silly comfort things like HEAT, A/C, and stereo..

In reality, the battery IS STILL the weak point.

It is simply a means of "storing" energy, it is a clumsy means of doing so and even that has serious losses.

Building batteries is a DIRTY process, it uses a lot of extremely harmful chemicals not to mention requires considerable amount of metals (some are rather dangerous by themselves), then you have ll the leftover hazardous materials from the build process that must be properly disposed of.

Electric vehicles being touted as "clean" and "renewable" is nothing more than a mirage and smoke screen, there is nothing clean about them..

Then when the battery life is done, you have a large hunk of hazardous material that you you will have to pay to dispose of..

Then you have another problem.. Guess what happens when the manufacturer of your EV decides to discontinue your battery?

Yep, the vehicle becomes JUNK!

There is no set standard for modern EVs and the manufacturer CAN pull the rug right from under you by no longer providing a battery!

Nothing like planned obsolescence of the entire vehicle!

You could have a 3 or 4 yr old vehicle being hauled off to the scrap yard just because nobody makes a replacement battery..

Sounds very green for the manufacturer and the scrapper in the form of cash.. Manufacturer gets to sell another vehicle faster and the scrapper gets to turn over more scrap metal faster..

I kinda admire these guys. They are obviously first adapters and the things they will experience will influence future cars and RV's. Our electric vehicle has no tow rating so I'll stick to commuting with it but for anyone who has owned or driven an electric vehicle it is a great experience. As far as them not catching on, that ship has sailed. Some European countries are already putting legislation in place that will require all vehicles under a certain weight class to be electric by 2015. Between now and then the technology will change a lot. We are limited to about 150 KM in ours but we will be buying a second electric vehicle to replace our last oil burner in a couple years. We have it narrowed down to a couple and will try to keep it under 30,000. For us it is not an environmental thing, more a performance and quality of the drive. Bang for your buck for us its worth it. But everyone has different needs. Obviously if you need a truck this isn't the way to go...at least for now. :)

We get mixed reactions from people on the whole electric vehicle thing. I think what surprises me is the number of people that want to see TESLA shut down and forced to europe becasue they have it in their head that Electric vehicles are some kind of ecological disaster. The oil companies have done their job well. I know a couple of European countries are trying to capitalize on this but I kinda hope he stays in North America. More than 1/3 of all vehicles sold in Norway now are electric. I am sure they would love to see him move there. :)

Anyway. Best wishes to the couple blaszing new trails in the RV lifestyle world. Too expensive for me but then again so is the truck camper combination that pulled in beside us. 80,000 for the 1 ton dually and 50 for the camper. I suspect the maintenance is a lot higher on the diesel truck than the Tesla. :) I know the only maintenance I have had to do so far on my little electric is fill the washer fluid. :) Yah i know...apples to oranges.

fireman41 wrote:
Why not hydrogen.(disclosure I transport and deliver liquid hydrogen). Right now Toyota is in the process of building a hydrogen fueling network in the north east it's going to start small and only consists of 12 stations but it's a start. Also lots of food wearhouse have switched there fork lift fleets over to run on hydrogen.

Hydrogen will find it's niche and right now it is a bit expensive for personal transportation.
Huge amounts of government money is trying to get this started. Automakers have also invested huge.
IMO it is just not going to pan out until the cost comes down.

Going to be a long time before a cross country trip is even possible let alone practical.

tpi wrote:

Grit dog wrote:

I guess it's not until the battery runs out 150clicks east of Brandon and the nearest "town" is a John Deere combine dealer. Or when winter is settin in and he's only halfway back home with another 2weeks to go to make that last 1500mi...

In all serious ness, like I said in an earlier post, it's a very novel concept. Not practical, but novel.

Sure and that is why you and I are using petroleum powered RVs. Because we don't have the luxury of the time or locations to charge. But like others, I can't see the negativity on this guy's trip. If he wants to do it, has the time I think it is great! He's most certainly using less fuel per mile than I am in my class C. A debate could be made about the electricity source and compare it to a diesel tow car which could pull the trailer along at over 20 MPG. I think this is future looking. How much power is from hydroelectric? How much solar and wind? Some form of nuclear which hasn't been invented or perfected? How much of that in the future? History has had lot of skeptics regarding new ideas. Lots of dead ends, lots of strikeouts. But successes too! Stuff we all take for granted.

Not all that long ago they were killing people for believing the earth was round.

Turtle n Peeps wrote:

John & Angela wrote:
Takes 20 to 30 minutes to charge and they are good for another couple hundred miles.

Where did these figures come from?

The x gets just a little over 200 miles by itself let alone pulling a big sail and anchor behind it. And that is without AC or a heater and all the windows up.

Yah, your right. I am quoting a TESLA not pulling a trailer. I should have been more clear.

They will be all wheel drive with a motor at each wheel with zero loss through a drive train. I have a Rayeo electric outboard motor on a pontoon boat that uses a Briggs & Stratton Etek brushless pancake motor. Four group 27 in series will do 8 mph. It's not powerful enough for a vehicle obviously but it could easily fit in the backside of many wheels. Motors at the wheel will provide anti lock braking, traction control and regenerative braking with only two bearings to wear out. The wheel could become half of the motor for further efficiency. The electric cars of today are still pretty crude compared to what we will have in 10 or 20 years.

Etek

Not a trolling motor :)

Why not hydrogen.(disclosure I transport and deliver liquid hydrogen). Right now Toyota is in the process of building a hydrogen fueling network in the north east it's going to start small and only consists of 12 stations but it's a start. Also lots of food wearhouse have switched there fork lift fleets over to run on hydrogen.

The negative I see is his journey is going to have to rely on the participation of others. Somewhere along he way they are going to have to charge their electric car at locations other than designated recharging stations.

If you are not participating, you're not participating. That is the end of your reach in this matter. If you think you need to for competitive reasons, that is the way of the competitive marketplace.