Noel planted a seed and left us the manual, who will make it grow?
Written: Jun 10 '07
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Easy to read for most, valuable reference guide for electric car owners.
Cons: Some may feel the book is too short.
The Bottom Line: As the title describes, Noel does a great job of making life with an electric car seem fascinating and at the same time doing something positive for the environment.
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| rgathright's Full Review: Solo: Life With an Electric Car |
I picked up this book from the public library shelves in 1993 on my way home from high school. Fourteen years later, I find myself making the final preparations to building my own electric vehicle. In an era of $3.30 a gallon for gasoline, electric vehicles have finally become cost effective as commuter vehicles. If you have ever been curious about EV’s and how they behave in the real world, Solo is a book for you. My review of this book is not a traditional epinions review, I have made an effort to offer some counter points and give you the reader a 2007 perspective on the building and use of electric vehicles (EV’s).
The book is about Noel’s efforts to acquire and use an electric vehicle in the early 90’s, years before the big three automakers even thought of mass producing their own. Since Noel could not buy a commercially manufactured EV he had to purchase a conversion. Conversions come in extensive varieties, from pure solar vehicles to hybrids (combination of a gasoline engine and an electric motor).1 While, I feel Noel’s obsession with the environmental impact of EV’s a tad obsessive, he does make several other good points towards the ownership of such a vehicle. The story weaves around the attempt to drive the car, Solo, from California to his home in Vermont. Sprinkled throughout, Noel discusses his own efforts to charge the car using solar energy and provides a brief history of these vehicles in the process.
As you read the book you will discover that Noel was an accomplished chatter box. He managed to hitch several rides from strangers who were interested in his car. His social gift also helped him convince business owners to let him charge his EV. The charging of the car required several kilowatts of electricity. Even though he was prepared to pay, the novelty of the car and Noel’s charm seemed to give him several free charges. Predictably, gas station owners gave him the most trouble. He had to pay outrageous rates for the electricity to charge his car and once he was expelled from a gas station by the owner! Noel, by the end of his journey across America, was carrying 100ft of power cord so that he could charge his EV. He found himself throwing cord from second floor hotel rooms, plugging into bedside lamps and even using a nail to suspend his power cord on the side of a wooden building!
In Louisiana, we have hot weather all the time, up north Solo and Noel did not. Solo ran into range problems in colder weather. Noel describes his hassles with working around cold weather EV driving like a seasoned veteran. I have yet to read another candid discussion about EV’s in cold climates. Future Vermont EV owners, should take notice and read the book!
The book does a great job of discussing the weakest point of electric vehicles today, hills and mountains. Noel’s original intention was driving the car from California back to Vermont, but this dream was cut short when he tried to drive the car over Donner Pass, California. The main reason is the 1,000lbs, or more, of batteries the vehicles must carry to provide a suitable range for city driving. Another simple reason is the amount of current required for uphill climbs, 300Amps, compared to 100Amps for driving on flat roads. Lead based batteries tend to lose their rated capacity faster when discharged under high amperage load. As a result, while your ammeter says you are discharging 300Amps climbing a hill, the battery is losing 325Amps. The excess capacity is discharged as thermal energy and through a chemical process called sulfication. The foothills of Donner Pass made Solo travel approximately 25 miles, compared to the estimated 62 mile range the car got in the city. While my explanation is plain, a government report on the testing of the electric S-10 is a great resource to see how hills and battery heating affect the range of EV travel.2.
The most interesting political feature of the book is the support Noel received from the American automotive industry. On the back cover of the book, Sean McNamara wrote a glowing review of the book, he is a member of the Advanced Engineering Staff Electric Vehicles for General Motors. Within the book, Noel ran into a man named Robert D. King. Bob, as he prefers to be called, built his first EV in 1972. He then built several other EV’s with features like regenerative braking and weight reduction to allow the EV to climb Mount Washington in the summer of 1978. So what did he do for a living? Bob turned out to be an electrical engineer for General Electric. He was working on an electric car concept for the Ford Motor Company.
2007, A Exploration of New Technologies
Solo is a great book for anyone curious about EVs. Rather than continuing to discuss the merits of the book, I want to discuss how relevant the book is in America’s society in 2007.
Charging
I have questioned Noel’s statements about charging in this book for years. How could Solo have so many problems finding a place to charge in California in 1992? Yet in 2007, my home on the Louisiana / Texas border still has a long way to go before I will ever be able to drive an electric car long distances. According to an informal “drop in” survey I conducted over the past year, no gas stations between Lake Charles and Houston were willing to offer me a plug to charge an electric vehicle. I am sure if I was more persuasive they would have changed their tune but this is an important roadblock to EV’s: charging. Filling up your car with gas is easy and takes just a few minutes. On the other hand, charging requires a willing business owner and several hours.
California’s solution to the EV charging problem in the mid 90’s was to mass produce vehicles that use high voltage chargers. They worked with the automotive industry to create charging stations or “pumps” throughout the state for owners. The problem with this solution became apparent quickly; the proprietary chargers were not in the vehicles and required high voltage electrical hookups, 400Vac for GM EV’s, at the charging “pumps”. As a result, EV owners were limited to charging at home or at these stations. Today most home converted EV’s use 120Vac chargers. A 120Vac charge takes four times as long to charge as a 400Vac charger, but is highly portable. GM’s battery charger had one more problem, heat. As a general unspoken rule, lead acid batteries cannot be charged effectively above 135F. They start to boil and evaporate the water right out of solution. In all my research, I never found a single temperature probe on GM’s EV’s. Simply reducing the charge will stop the battery from suffering an untimely death. Only time and demand will come up with a solution to this problem.
Solar Power
In 2007, we now have a wide range of solar panels to pick from. In fact Ebay has a lively used solar panel market now! I have purchased several types of solar panels and only found one to be flexible and durable enough to be mounted directly on a vehicle: PowerFilm Weatherpro. They are dense, relatively cheap and can even be cut to shape! Look them up and order a sample panel, they make great bookmarks.
How much power could a mid-sized truck covered with PowerFilm panels create? Assuming you cover the hood, cab roof and entire bed (on a bed cover) with these solar cells you will have 75sqFt of coverage area. A 12"x12" piece can produce .1Amps @ 12VDC in 80% sun (the power data is from actual testing on my Jeep).
75SqFt * 12VDC * .1A = 90Watts
90Watts * 10 hours = 900 Watts of usable energy in a day!
A single high capacity 12VDC lead acid battery used in EV's holds 3,800 Watts. 900 Watts is 23% of the battery capacity, so you could give the battery one quarter charge in 10 hours. Typical full size EV's operate at 120VDC, 900Watts is only 2.23%.
Using these figures you could only get 2.23% charge in a single day with a fully covered truck. A truck has more surface area than a car and I also assuming full coverage of solar panels. I added no weight or draq resistance for these panels because they are ultralight weight and only require silicone to attach to a vehicle. Almost all the other types of solar panels require glass enclosed cases that add weight and drag to the vehicle.
All these numbers were slightly inflated, to assume near perfect conditions, but it illustrates a point: Solar power can only charge up a typical EV's batteries 2.3% in perfect sun conditions not the 5% that Noel claims. The batteries have a total capacity close to what Noel had, see Page 35 in the book.
Hydrogen Fuel Cells
We all watched or heard about the movie, “Who killed the electric car?” The movie gave over ten minutes of airtime to the subject of fuel cells in cars. They talked about how the government is giving millions of dollars towards researching the technology. Has anyone told you about the manufacturing process and raw materials to produce a single fuel cell? Fuel cells are a poor answer. Each fuel cell requires $1,000 of platinum to act as a catalyst in the chemical reaction that creates energy. For each $1,000 you invest in just the platinum you can get 1Kw of energy conversion potential. The price does not include the cost of the energy required to prepare the platinum chemically to act as a catalyst. Remember, platinum is a free market traded metal, prices rise with inflation or faster.
Summary
In my opinion, Solo Life With An Electric Car is still the book to have for the EV thinking car builder. The core focus of the book, charging and driving, is still the focus of every EV owner. We now have low cost sealed lead acid batteries, but these batteries still charge just as slow as they did when Noel was burning kilowatts. The only worthwhile technology that has been developed since Solo, is the PowerFilm solar panel.
I gave the book five stars because the subject of EV ownership is not covered in print by anyone else, yet. As a work of non-fiction, I found the book very educational and filled with yankee wit that is sometimes more valuable than a room full of engineers.
Footnotes
1Visit the following website to read about the Toyota Prius Hybrid: www.toyota.com/prius/
2Chevy S-10 Accelerated Reliability Report www.eere.energy.gov/vehiclesandfuels/avta/light_duty/fsev/fsev_fleet_reports.html
3PowerFilm Website: www.powerfilmsolar.com
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
rgathright
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Member: Reuben Gathright
Location: Louisiana
Reviews written: 154
Trusted by: 108 members
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