[oclug] OT Power Thread Was: The Sinnister MS Connection

[bbarnett at L8R.net]

On 05-Apr-2001 Jon Earle wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 04, 2001 at 11:21:38PM -0400, Mike Kenzie wrote:
>> 
>> > This would also assume that the car manufacturers all
>> decided on a standard
>> > for power requirements, battery shape and placement (the
>> batteries are
>> > _heavy_ and so presumably a machine would perform the
>> exchange from under
>> > or behind the vehicle) and a standard for battery
>> manufacturers to follow.
>> 
>> They managed to agree on standard grades for liquid fuels
>> (gasoline, diesel, kerosene, alcohols...), and size of
>> nozzle at the pumps.  They still haven't agree on where to
>> place the fuel door, reserve tanks, or the fuel gauge (I've
>> often thought it would make sense to put the gauge on the
>> side of the dash that the door was on).
> 
> The difference I see here though, is that a single gas pump is relatively
> small, and the storage tank is underground.  Hundreds of fillups can be
> performed with this arrangement alone.  If you had to store hundreds of
> large battery packs, plus build a mechanism to retrieve a battery for the
> right size of vehicle (small cars will use smaller batteries than large cars
> which use smaller batteries than trucks, etc), transport it to the car,
> remove the old battery, install the new one, and transport the old one to
> either a holding facility or a charging facility, and do all that in less
> time than it takes one to do #1 and get a coffee, you'd have a massive
> challenge on your shoulders!  Your average corner service station could not
> run this type of operation, which means that this servicing would be the
> domain of large operators.
> 


This is all a moot point, since electric cars won't use batteries, but hydrogen
;)



---

                                     Dynamic Hosting
                                   HTTP://www.L8R.net/             
                      "We Provide Static Hostnames for Dynamic IP's"