Electric MX3 Conversion

[Ryan]

Capacitors are coming a long way... You can get 100F capacitors that are the size of a roll of coins...

Extrapolating the technology wouldn't be hard.

Edit, doing a bit more research, they cram many more farads into smaller things than that. I realize energy is a function of capacity and voltage though, and I don't care enough to crunch any numbers, but I do know even the relatively old ones I plated with in high school were impressive.

They'd sold the charge time issue too. Capacitors take seconds...

[ethand]

hmm, not entirely sure about your figures there, Indoro... in Australia, CNG is about 65-70c/L (petrol around $1.20, depending on the day of the week!), making it a lot more than $2 for a tank... but that can easily be put down to differing countries.
As for power, it will change from car to car. For example, my dad's old car, a Toyota Prado, was converted to CNG, and it was TOTALLY gutless, to the point that he mostly gave up on using the CNG function and driving it in Petrol mode. A Toyota LandCruiser, however, only takes a very very small power loss (but there usually is a least some kind of power loss).
Then there's a loss of boot space. Screw that. I want to have a boot that I can actually fit something in (other than a frickin massive CNG tank), and be able to fold my rear seats down if needed...
Not dissin it - if it works for you, then thats great... it just hasnt been so great from my experience!
As for the point about swapping stations for batteries, it could work. There is always the possibilities of machinery being developed that can carry said heavy battery packs, or people that could be hired for that (with the help of trolleys, etc., of course). Otherwise, there could be a station with uber-high voltage that could possibly charge the batteries faster.... As with any fuel/propulsion system, there are problems with electric systems. But there are also ways to find solutions to problems. It will just take time!
But in the mean time, different fuels will suit different people's driving needs. Some only need short trips, to batteries might be great. Others need long kays, so diesel or CNG or even petrol might be the best car for them...

[Inodoro Pereyra]

Ryan: Supercapacitors did come a long way, but they're still far from being a suitable replacement for a car battery.
Let me put it in numbers: the OP stated a 12 x 12V, 80Ah battery pack would give him a 40 Km (about...25 miles??) range. One Farad= 1Ampere-second/1Volt. 1 Ampere-hour=3600 Amp-second.
So, a battery that's 12V, 80 Ah, is

80 x 3600
------------- =24000 Farad
12

That means that, if you want a, let's say, 200 Km range, you will need 12 x 120000 F capacitors. That's still way too big, way too heavy. And a 120 mile range is still not that impressive (although it'd be much better than the current numbers)

But the biggest disadvantage is that capacitors, unlike batteries, have a linear voltage to energy curve. That means that, while a car battery will have almost 13V while fully charged, and about 10V+ when fully drained, a capacitor will have the same (let's say) voltage when fully charged, but as it's being drained, the voltage between its electrodes will drop linearly, so at half charge it will have about 6V, and 0V when fully drained.

Ethand: wow, that's expensive!
Of course, my numbers are that of my city, but I didn't think there'd be such a difference...

I've had it both ways. On carbureted cars, especially if the shop that installs the kit doesn't do the job properly (if they don't rejet the carb, or if they don't connect the coolant lines to the regulator), you can see a fairly noticeable power loss. I've driven a few cars like that (mostly French, Renault 12s and Peugeot 504s) But on EFI engines, and if the guys at the shop flash the ECU properly, I actually rode one car (Renault 19) that was more powerful on CNG than on gas. I guess it depends a lot on the shop...
Yeah, the tank takes about half the trunk. But if you go electric, the batteries would take much more than that.

The weight of the batteries was just one example. There are many more issues.
For example, volume, and time. Charging a battery pack in 3 minutes is a nice dream, but it's just that: a dream. Google the GE Wattstation. It charges a 24 KWh battery pack in 4-8Hrs. And what they don't tell you is that, at least if you're using lead acid batteries, fast charging them will kill them fairly fast. But even at that rate, if you had a commercial "electric station" you'd need a big warehouse, and a ton of money on batteries to keep charged, to swap for the customer's packs.

And then there's another issue: lifespan. How would you feel if you just bought a brand new electric car, and when you went to recharge it, your brand spanking new pack was swapped by an old pack that dies on you an hour later? And then, who would pay for the packs when they die?

I agree with you that over time, I'm confident those problems will be solved. I've never said electric cars will never be an option. I said TODAY they're not.
I still hope they will become a viable alternative within my lifetime...

[ethand]

yeah, we get taxes on fuels HEAPS here in Australia, plus the oil firms have no government policies that prevent them from selling petrol/gas/oil at whatever the hell prices they want to... So they do...
I'd have thought that if it were a simple matter that was wrong with our Prado's CNG system (such as an ECU being reset), that our machanic would have picked it up over the 3-4 years that we had the car - he was a great mechanic and has picked up many things our other cars that many might not have done...
But still, while CNG is great for reducing costs, it does have a few issues, as does any other fuel source!!
yeah, I agree that EVs are not really viable right now!

[wytbishop]

I think maybe people think that I am suggesting that electric cars are going to take over. I completely agree that electric is not going to replace ICE as the defacto motor vehicle power source any time soon. I'm obviously not going to spend $30k+ on a car that will need a new $8k Lithium battery pack in 5-8 years. Supercapacitors and Ultracapacitors and Ultrabatteries and all the other exotic advances that are currently being developed will eventually make it possible for an electric car to drive 400km on a charge and within 10 years of that, it will be available and affordable and cost effective. It's an evolution.

But it IS a viable small scale option RIGHT NOW using low tech battery technology which is inexpensive and easily recycleable. And there are lots of interesting and accessible technologies being developed in charging and storage which will improve ease of use, range and power for the do-it-yourselfer. Performance is not comparable to ICE, but there are many examples of niche companies making conversions and kits for sale today. For significantly less than the price of most new cars and a lot less than the price of anything cutting edge that gets really good mileage I can convert a Miata or a Geo or VW...there are so many. I could pick up an RS MX-3 with a blown motor for $500 on this forum, put a few hundred bucks into the chassis for brakes and suspension and convert it to electric for $10k-15k and have a daily driver that costs a few cents per kilometer to operate, gets me capably from A to B and will easily run for 10 years. Yes in that time you'd probably have to spend $3-4000 on replacing lead acid or AGM batteries, but in the life of that converted car I would spend less than the purchase price of my 2007 Mazda 3.

I might look into that Miata conversion kit. It would be nice to just buy the battery boxes and brackets and stuff.

There used to be a couple but now there are no CNG stations in Edmonton, but there are 3 in Calgary and they are charging $.76 per liter. Not a significant savings over gasoline which is currently in the $.88/L range.

[Nd4SpdSe]

Not a significant savings over gasoline which is currently in the $.88/L range.

WTF! We peaked at $1.13 this week and it went back down to $1.08/L today. I hear there's a station serving @ $1.02 outside of Kingston. I haven't seen 88c/L in a while

[Ryan]

We went from 75 to 1.50 in about two years... and now we're back at 95.9, and have been for a month or two

[Dragon1212]

We went from 75 to 1.50 in about two years... and now we're back at 95.9, and have been for a month or two

And we not moving down very often either

[wytbishop]

yeah the worst I saw was about a year and a half ago at $1.37/L. We've been hovering around 85-90cents for most of this year.

[Inodoro Pereyra]

Hmmm...
I've been doing some research (I haven't been in Argentina since 2000), and CNG prices in my country haven't changed.
The price is now about $.50/m3. being that a 60L tank takes 12m3, that's about $6, which is about 2 dollars.

Maybe it is because Argentina doesn't need to import oil, maybe because we've been exporting natural gas for decades...I don't know...

There's always been a big difference between the fuel prices in my country, and those in the US. I'm not sure why, but it's a reality. For example, traditionally, Diesel price is about 25-30% that of gasoline, while here in the US, it's normally slightly higher.

Either way, at least in there, CNG has proven to be a great alternative, to the point that, as of today (for what I read), there are almost a million cars using CNG (and in a country with 42 million people, 1 million cars is a lot), and 13000 cars are outfitted with a CNG system every month.

[Newfie_dan]

there are a few of those here in saskathewan as well, its an interesting use for natural gas, I believe the big reason for the difference in fuel costs between argentina and the us/canada is taxes on the fuel, I may be incorrect about that but I think that was the main reason for the difference.

[wytbishop]

Probably subsidized by the gov't like in Venezuela. All forms of refined oil are practically free there because the government owns all of it. There are no private oil companies.

[Leonid]

in my country gasoline is 1.5$/L and the avarage payment is 280-300$ per month... what can I say and the LPG (I'm not shure do you know what is LPG) is 0.95$/L
I have MX-3 98 1,6 107hp with LPG injection system and now with 10$ I can drive around 60 mile

[Inodoro Pereyra]

there are a few of those here in saskathewan as well, its an interesting use for natural gas, I believe the big reason for the difference in fuel costs between argentina and the us/canada is taxes on the fuel, I may be incorrect about that but I think that was the main reason for the difference.

I honestly don't have a clue what the taxes are in Canada, But in Argentina, they're very high. I don't know now, but in 2000, off of every dollar you spent on fuel, 87c were taxes.

[wytbishop]

http://retail.petro-canada.ca/en/fuelsavings/2132.aspx

Average price of Gasoline in Alberta is in the neighborhood of $0.90-0.95/L right now. Alberta typically has the lowest prices in Canada because the crude is located here.