What would an EV city look like?

[dirtdad]

An interesting thought occurred to me the other day, I thought it would be fun to share and discuss. Cities and infrastructures in newly developing countries often are built on new technology and leap frog past what is available in established, older big cities. For example, many developing areas are not even putting land line phone service in place, but relying completely on cell phone service, thus eliminating all of the complication of running another set of wiring and its attendant infrastructure.

If we fast forward just a little - maybe not at all - you can image a city where all future development is planned around an all electric vehicle environment. What would it look like? Never mind mass transit, just consider road vehicles. I thought of a few things, but I am sure a group like this can come up with much more.

Of course, the air quality problems that face many developing cities would be much reduced. Noise levels would be lower, it would be possible to have a high standard of living close to main thoroughfares. Electric vehicles tend to be lighter than internal combustion vehicles (ICV, unless there is a better acronym?) , so the kinds of roads needed could be very different. Overpasses, interchanges, roadbeds, etc. could be smaller, reducing the amount of space needed for roads, perhaps dramatically.

On the other hand, large vehicles will still be needed for industry, delivery, maintenance, etc. International freight is based on large containers that are basically bolted to a chassis to form an 18 wheeler trailer, for example. Would some number of ICVs still be needed? Could industrial class vehicles also be electric? What about ICVs from beyond the boundaries of such a place? Would it be practical to ban ICVs coming into the city from other destinations?

While vehicle emissions would be low, the demand for electric energy would be much higher than a comparable city of ICVs. While more electric plants would still be cleaner than more ICVs, what would be the best way to manage that much electric energy generation?

What would refueling look like? It is not hard to imagine making cars that can charge to 80-90% in 5-15 minutes at some point, given the right charger and battery technology. Would refueling stations just charge a markup over utility provided electricity? Given the cost of a fuel up, maybe it is more likely that other businesses would give complementary recharges to attract customers. I imagine a Starbucks with an outlet at every parking space. Employee parking lots might have an outlet at every spot. Perhaps if vehicle range increases enough, refueling may become a non-problem.

I thought it was a fun and valuable exercise, but I am sure there is a lot more positive impact and new infrastructure challenges that would come with an EV based city. It has probably already been discussed and studied somewhere.

 

[Link]

ICE is generally the accepted acronym for internal combustion engine. ICEs for things they propel.

I would imagine it wouldn't be all that much different from how it is now.

Electrics tend to be lighter than their gas counterparts, but mostly because they tend to be smaller. Eventually, we'll likely see the same diversity with electrics as we do with ICEs now. They'll take up the same amount of space, so the roads won't likely change. Not to mention that wouldn't be good for any big rigs hauling in food and whatnot. I think most of what overpasses are supporting are actually themselves. Which is lighter: a couple hundred cars or half a million cubic feet of concrete? (No seriously, I don't know and am too lazy to calculate that out at 2AM.)

Other than the air quality and noise level, I think the main thing that would change would be the power infrastructure. You'd need to deliver WAY more power. Even a dinky little 10kWh pack is likely to more than double your power consumption. More wire is required.

Recharging is the interesting thing, though. It seems that most people will charge at home, eliminating the extra they would have to pay at a station. But then what do you do if you need a charge and can't get home? Will sufficient battery capacity, this doesn't seem like it would be a particularly common occurrence, so I don't think you could make a profit off of it. If anything, it seems most likely that stores will end up as energy stations (TM :wink too. You buy your groceries/whatever and pay for the charge. 20kWh free with purchases of greater than $50 :wink:.

Supply trucks would likely be powered with gas until batteries can reach a certain level of energy density. Trucks are big, heavy, and not particularly aerodynamic. Not particularly EVish qualities. I've only ever seen 1 supply truck (concept) that was electric. It was quite small and only had 150 miles of range. That won't cut it. Besides, I don't really care if they have to remain gas-fueled, as long as I don't starve.

 

[Drunkskunk]

I don't see the future city being some bright shiney thing, clean beacuse of the lack of ICE. It will still be dirty, poluted, and noisy, but for diffrent reasons.

-Wind turbines. Sky scrapers turn cities into wind tunnels. a 10mph wind outside the city can become a 50mph wind 50 feet up inside a sea of skyscrapers, and an electricaly dependant city will cash in on this "free" energy. there will be turbines between buildings everywhere they can stick one. and a spinning blade makes noise. Infact, a lot of noise, but at low frequancy. put enough of them together echoing down the canion of a city street, and you have an appriciable amount of noise.

Inner city transit, Domestic and delivery- I see the idea of overhead wires delivering power to busses and delivery vehicles the same way it does now for trollies. you don't need a rail, ground is ground. But a future street might be paved with concrete mixed with shredded scrap iron to make it a better conductor. you only need some way to ground the vehicle to the road, anything I can thing of,(brush, metal wheel, ect) would be noisy and wear out leaving debris, but be cheap and effective.

Ozone- anything that uses or produces electricity also produces Ozone, which is relitivly harmless, except that it makes breathing difficult, and bonds to other chemicles to form the basis of smog. Far less detrimental to the enviroment than whay belches out of a tailpipe, but probably more unplesant to live with. Forget the idea of an electric city being a place of blue skys. An Elctric city will be a place of Cronic Asthma, dark hazey skies, and that wounderfull smell of a blown transformer.

Cancer - high gaus EMF causes it. Lung cancer rates will probably go down, but reproductive organ cancers will rise. The idea of the tinfoil hat will become less of a joke as products begine appearing with EMF protection the same way we have UV protection now.

ICE- unless made illegal, it will still exsist. you could probably get 100 miles worth of fuel for a Bio diesel motor of say, 30cc from an average family's left over weekly bacon grease. And if Diesel hits $30 a gallon, you better believe people will be brewing there own.

And when oil dries up, electricity is going to get expensive. $20 a kilowatt? Thats probably cheap in 50 years.

 

[blackstangt]

Basically you'd be able to see it from farther away, more clearly than other cities.

 

[safe]

Fashions will change... they always do... but the basic transportation of cars will still be common, they will just run on electricity rather than gas. Something like the EEStor supercapacitor could be charged in 5 minutes, so you could charge up at home or you could stop into a "Electric Station" on the interstate and get a quick charge for a fee.

I'm more concerned with the battles of East verses West in the coming years. However, the more rapidly the West converts to electricity the better we are in the war. Since most of the oil is now controlled by foreign and Eastern powers the west needs to wake up and make the change.

"Going Green" has idealistic aspects as well as pragmatic and defensive aspects. We "need" to change for strategic and military reasons and the benefits of that change are also good for everyone else.

"Going Green" is a true "win win" for the West.

But it's not good for the East... the East is getting rich off the West right now...

 

[TylerDurden]

An EVcity might look like an old city: a city where most services are within walking distance. Neighborhoods would be more self reliant. The most EV friendly cities might have been horse & carriage cities.

Look at the cities that are already bike-friendly and EV friendly... there are some clues.

 

[Dr. Shock]

I think it would look like Amseterdam. A dense city, mostly flat. Narrow streets for greater density, no garages, so people view cars as a burden. The canals are a nice feature, because barges are the ideal way to transport cargo with electric power. You could have a cargo center outside the city to transfer cargo from over the road ICE-powered trucks to electric milk-float type vehicles for city deliveries.

I like the Dutch bakfiets cargo bikes. They cry out for electric power. Lots of places to store batteries.

Personal transport on bikes and trolleys.

Solar panels on buildings, wind generators on power poles.

Downsides to all this include: cold weather and rain make bikes and public transport unpleasant; system favors young healthy people over older/disabled people; expensive; pushy government telling you how to live; not everyone wants to live in a big city and have to ride a bike or take a trolley with sick people coughing and perverts rubbing against you.

Also, what do we do with places like Los Angeles? We're built on an entirely different model from Amsterdam. Everything is already spread out, because that's how people here like living. I guess at some level of fuel prices they'd prefer to move into the city.

 

[recumbent]

I like "drunkskunk's" version of the "EV city" especially the "roads paved with schredded scrap iron for better conductivity"

The many subdivisions will simply have stores & service stations built into each one, limiting the need to drive, and creating more employment.
Electricity will stay relativly cheap because it's a necesity, cars & trucks will get power from overhead wires or roads with scrap iron imbedded into the cement each car will have power meters in them like houses do now.

I think the world will do just fine.

 

[Mathurin]

So, you really think purchasing an electric vehicle will suddenly cause the morons to get a job and/or move somewhere that makes the distance from home to work human scaled so as to stop being part of the urban sprawl problem? I don't see that happening, what's the point of buying a vehicle if you're not going to use it? Besides, it's a well known fact that not needing a motor vehicle to live makes your penis smaller, and wasting money on a motorcycle/car to get your daily dose of wasting time in traffic makes your quality of life very much better, kthx.

 

[TylerDurden]

So, you really think purchasing an electric vehicle will suddenly cause the morons to get a job and/or move somewhere that makes the distance from home to work human scaled so as to stop being part of the urban sprawl problem?

Nah, the opposite: EVs will be embraced earlier by communities that can most conveniently adapt.

 

[Mathurin]

The opposite? Well, if you mean that urban sprawl will end or that people would chose not to follow that path, I really don't see how EV's would fit in that picture other then as toys/luxury. See I don't need/want a car because a pair of shoes or a bike works better. When I want to rent/borrow a motor vehicle it's either to go fetch something really big and heavy like construction materials, or to go on a day trip to another city. EV's being crippled with limited range/refuelling, second case makes them not practical. If you're gonna get one motor vehicle, may as well get something practical, right? So I can see inner-city delivery trucks working out well as EV's, like mail trucks. But the overall picture I get isn't that of an EV city.

I bet suburbia's gonna have a lot more ev's, sooner.

This being said, a few hours ago I got a new job at this awesome bistro on St. Jean, about 8 kms from where I currently live... And I misspelled morans in my previous post. All of a sudden fixing up another ebike suddenly became more attractive, interesting eh?

 

[Toorbough ULL-Zeveigh]

Everyone is wearing the mandatory silver spandex unitard.
Oh yeah, & a woman is U.S. prez.

 

[Mathurin]

All of a sudden fixing up another ebike suddenly became more attractive[...]

Actually scratch that, I barely have time to warm up and I'm already there. Tho again, for winter it would be really pleasant. Also the food is awesome.

 

[PJD]

I am inclined to agree with Mathurin.

The truly well-designed city doesn't need cars at all, preserves the open space that gets covered with parking lots and big boxes in car-oriented development, and consequently, are vastly improved places to live. Amsterdam, Venice, even some parts of my town of Pittsburgh have examples of this. I only became intersted in EV's after my job and consequently I, moved the suburbs. The suburbs are a cultural wasteland - can't even get a decent beer out here!

When I lived in the city, I lived in a walkable part of town with shopping, dining and culture all a short walk out the door and loved it. Work was a 10 minute bus ride that ran every 10 minutes - vastly more convienient than driving. I didn't have to scrape or shovel my car out for 6 winters.

http://www.carfree.com/

 

[paultrafalgar]

What you really don't want is one of these:
0-300mph in 30secs, top speed 340mph:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjNa6Gd-kIo
see also:
http://www.acabion.com/
:lol:

 

[Toorbough ULL-Zeveigh]

300 mph eh?
Like the Vector, it's pretty to look at but performance specs sure to come waay down on the production version.
Also like the Vector I think this may be a stock investment scam.
Vertical stabs can only serve as a drag element on a ground based vehicle.
And if you think that's becuz it's more flying than rolling then it means the ground effects haven't been sorted properly.
Likely nothing more than a trailer queen

Can anyone identify the city where they have that sculpture of the life-size Newtonian inertia-balls?
No EV city should be without.

 

[TylerDurden]

Can anyone identify the city where they have that sculpture of the life-size Newtonian inertia-balls?
No EV city should be without.

Luzern

http://www.d4center.ch/

 

[Toorbough ULL-Zeveigh]

Learned something new.
There's a brand of dairy products called Lucerne, that makes some sense now.
Never even heard of the place b4, thanx!

 

[njs]

Vertical stabs can only serve as a drag element on a ground based vehicle.

Perhaps you should inform Formula 1 of this development.

 

[swbluto]

An EV city would have high-speed travel ways inside a vacuum so that air drag would be effectively eliminated and that your high-speed long distance range would be effectively "unlimited" on relatively little energy (And the power needs may actually be low enough so one wouldn't need to use battery power for long-distances; one may possibly only use contact or wireless power transmission). As a plus, combustion engines wouldn't be able to run so no enforcement necessary. Now, yes, such a vacuum wouldn't be practical with modern technology given the obvious expenses with the involved structure, but imagine a day when flying nano-particles, with an orientation, self-structured to form one way valves such that groups of said particles could create a vacuum with ease, and entrance and exist from said vacuum would be efficient and without tremendous loss as the "one-way membrane" would just simply 'stretch' during the e/in-gress.

I do see electricity prices increasing as oil depletes, but I don't think it's going to be "uber-expensive" as grid-parity with 'renewable sources' is something like twice what it is now or less. The alternatives are not necessarily "uber expensive" even though oil might be, and I think you'll see green technologies become cheaper as more research and development is invested in them.

 

[Toorbough ULL-Zeveigh]

Perhaps you should inform Formula 1 of this development.

what development would that be??
i lost interest in f1 when ayrton senna got kilt.
u sayin f1 has gone 60's retro & sprouted fins?
well, good on them.

 

[gerlewis]

maybe batteries will work on an exchange basis at 'energy stations' similar to how you would exchange a gas canister at a camping store for a full one. So there's no waiting around for hours.

But they would be too heavy for us to swap over, so some automated machine would be required I guess....