Electric kitcar

[Chordpurist]

Hi,

Are there any examples of fully electric 7 inspired kit cars, ever made?

I love the idea (and performance potential) of fully electric cars such as the Wrightspeed X1.

(www.wrightspeed.com/x1.html)

Dave

[limpabit]

The is one I've seen. A 3 wheel trike kind og thing. I can't remember the name.

Yes, though electric is a very good idea, the main problem has been range. Good for city and not very long trips.

You look at the Tesla.

http://www.teslamotors.com/

At near £100K. Built by Lotus in Norfolk. But a range of 220 miles. This is a lot by electric car standards.

But still not far enough for me. For example. Stoneleigh is 121 miles away. I'd be looking for someone with a generator to recharge when I got there.

Great idea. But until technology gets better (and range), I think it will struggle in a main stream and will only be sold in small numbers.

[Patrick]

This will become more interesting once they run on self sustaining power such as hydrogen. No need to recharge, just add water!

[limpabit]

Hydrogen is definatly the way to go for the future. Once we can get outlets supplying it.

This has got me thinking. Electric cars with hydrogen. Is there the space in a kit car for all the components? Not seen any components etc. I would imagine the batteries to be quite heavy and big.

Maybe a daka 4x4? Though would make it unstable for off roading I would have thought.

[Patrick]

Originally Posted by limpabit

Hydrogen is definatly the way to go for the future. Once we can get outlets supplying it.

This has got me thinking. Electric cars with hydrogen. Is there the space in a kit car for all the components? Not seen any components etc. I would imagine the batteries to be quite heavy and big.

Maybe a daka 4x4? Though would make it unstable for off roading I would have thought.

With a hydrogen plant onboard there's no need to batteries I shouldn't think so a fuel tank same size as you have in your average kit + electric motor + power station and your laughing!

[JG]

The Honda FCX Clarity on Top Gear last night was interesting. It was as Patrick describes, no need for batteries, just a Hydrogen fuel cell and an electric motor. Potentially no servicing either (for the power plant at least anyway)

The thing I can't get my head around though is the use of Hydrogen. It is supposedly the most abundant resource available (in the solar system etc) but so far they seem to use natural gas to get it and now they are looking at water. What happens to water for instance once they have got the hydrogen out of it, what property does water then become, is it still usable as water.

As you can probably tell I'm no chemist so this mystifies me. The use of water is a big no no for me if it in any way depletes water reserves. I've read some articles on wikipedia but I'm still none the wiser as to how they extract a never ending supply of Hydrogen without it affecting us in some way.

John

[Patrick]

Water is H2O so you split it up you get 1 Oxygen and 2 Hydrogen molecules

The big issue is Hydrogen may be the most abundant resource but its always attached to something. Splitting up molecules takes energy that's the draw back, it still comes from fossil fuel.

Apparently there is a chemical process using gallium that works too, but I don't know much about chemistry either!