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2015 Mustang to be debut December 5th!


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My rally against electrical cars (less the Tesla because it meets many of my own buying criteria) - See above. Same criticism as with hybrids. The only added benefit is that I disagree with your premise that they're not the future of automobiles and will largely remain a luxury and will become insignificant in the future. Just a difference of opinion I agree with you on ALL OTHER counts.

I didn't say they weren't the future. I said 1) the currently available ones aren't the future and will likely be crippled as legacy designs at some point and 2) the ones that will be the future are still a ways off.

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His point was traveling beyond that range is an issue (on a trip or something) - electric charging stations are not that prevalent across the country yet, rendering a journey beyond that 300 mile range (or, more realistically 150 miles out and 150 miles back). Around town or whatnot, sure, you can charge it at home every night or every few days or whatever, but otherwise, there isn't the infrastructure to support electric vehicles on a widespread basis yet - both because of the simple lack of charging stations, and also the time it takes for the batteries to charge. As with anything, however, we'll see more charging stations pop up, and charging times will decrease, rendering electric vehicles more practical to a more widespread audience. That's why you see Tesla creating the quick charge and battery swap stations in an attempt to bridge the gap until then, and also make the Model S more viable to people.

the other issue, is once there is a few charging stations around then I would have to think the tech will have been leapfrogged....

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the other issue, is once there is a few charging stations around then I would have to think the tech will have been leapfrogged....

I think that's one of the major hurdles in the expansion of the electric charging network. Once the "next big thing" in charging comes along, all of the current infrastructure will need to be updated and relatively quickly. When was the last time there was a need for a major infrastructure update to fuel pumps? Even with evolving fuel pump standards, at the end of the day the older gas pumps would still be capable of putting fuel in your tank.

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I disagree w/3FF's contention that the future is electric vs. hybrid vehicles.

 

There are several points of contention:

 

1) The notion that electric vehicles are less mechanically complex is true to a most limited extent. ICE motors are, by this point in time, basically sealed units for the first five to six years of ownership. They are more complex than an electric motor, but they are tightly manufactured and extremely reliable over their first 100k miles.

 

2) The electron. Storing energy in the form of an abundance of electrons is incredibly inefficient because electrons don't like to be near other electrons. Energy density is a major concern in a vehicle which is limited both in the amount of weight it can carry and the amount of space available. Chemical energy stored in molecular bonds is significantly more efficient.

 

It may be argued that time will make battery storage more efficient, but there is a lower bound on this. Lithium already has, to all intents and purposes, the highest possible charge density of any element. You're not going to see a great leap in charge density from lithium-ion batteries.

 

3) Recharging/refueling. There is a trivial increase in refuelling time from a 10 gallon tank to a 20 gallon tank. It takes twice as long, but the time in both cases is measured in minutes. This is because energy stored in chemical bonds results in more or less stable material that can be transferred from point 'A' to point 'B'. Whether it's firewood or gasoline, you are transferring chemical compounds, not individual electrons. With recharging, you are not transferring material from one point to another, you are transferring electrons. And this is considerably more difficult. A guy with a bucket and a funnel can refill a gas tank. Try pouring a bucket of electrons into a battery!

 

Amusingly, the best solution to the charging question seems to be quick-change battery replacement, which at least gets you back to moving materials instead of electrons. Attempting to charge a battery quickly requires both a battery that is capable of being charged quickly (not all are) and a very high amperage electric feed. Tesla's so called 'high speed' charging stations provide the energy equivalent of perhaps six gallons of gas in 30 minutes, or roughly 20 times longer than the time required to pump 6 gallons of gas. It's possible that time may improve the ability to charge, but here, again, you are bumping up against the limits of ion-based batteries. Chemical reactions can only take place so quickly. There are no chemical limitations to the amount of gas that can be pumped at any one time.

 

I have no idea what the future of transportation looks like. I expect that hybrid technologies such as regenerative braking, start/stop, and some electromotive assist will become standard over time, as all these technologies have the benefit of recapturing lost energy and preventing the loss of energy. PFI was once a 'performance' option. It's not any more because it was a far superior means of delivering gas to the combustion chamber. There's no reason to assume that technologies that are used on 'green' cars will not become mainstream, as any number of performance and luxury technologies have gone mainstream.

I am am quoting this in part because you guys need to re read this until you grasp what Richard is saying.

 

Energy density in both weight and volume are key factors that are not going away. It is simple physics.

 

As it turns out, nature has solved the energy storage problem for us. The bond between carbon and hydrogen is so powerful that a gallon of gasoline contains more hydrogen than a gallon of liquid hydrogen, it doesn't have to be kept incredibly cold to keep in in a liquid state, and it is easily contained in a cheap, simple to make, plastic gas tank.

 

Right now we are energy hunter-gatherers. We have to forage to find deposits of energy. We can, and are, becoming energy farmers. We can use the sun to drive the chemical process to make our own stored energy fuels using carbon from carbon dioxide and hydrogen from water. Electricity breaks the bonds between the carbon and oxygen that make up carbon dioxide, and electricity also breaks the bonds between hydrogen and oxygen that make up water. The carbon and hydrogen then combine to form extremely pure forms of gasoline, diesel, and kerosene (jet fuel). When these very pure hydrocarbons burn they produce the same two ingredients they are made of: carbon dioxide and water. The cycle can then repeat. This allows us to use off peak excess wind and solar power to create the liquid fuels we need for transportation. It is like turning excess barley into beer. The beer is worth more than the barley and it has a longer shelf life. The recycling process is different!

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There seems to be something wrong with BON, I clicked on a Mustang thread, and everyone is posting about hybrids and BEVs. I will say that there's a lot of ignorant spew in these posts, especially from the anti-BEV crowd. Try to do some research, dudes, and not just websites that parrot your views. Google lithium air battery and lithium nano battery for starters.

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There seems to be something wrong with BON, I clicked on a Mustang thread, and everyone is posting about hybrids and BEVs. I will say that there's a lot of ignorant spew in these posts, especially from the anti-BEV crowd. Try to do some research, dudes, and not just websites that parrot your views. Google lithium air battery and lithium nano battery for starters.

apologies, the lame for the derailment may lay at my feet again....MOOOHOOOHAHAHAHA...me and tan-gents

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From what I've seen, Three photos will be revealed at 12:01AM December 5 and the car will be shown off at 7AM EST on Good Morning America, with events across the world going on for the rest of the day.

actually Ive heard that the world will actually cease rotating temporarily.....

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Lucky me. I get to go to the Mustang reveal in Dearborn on Thursday. Not the one with the press, but right after at 10:30 at the same venue. So I get to touch, see, and feel if I can wedge my way in which is usually a big problem in these events. Lots of people crowding the vehicle(s), and then they have a time limit so you can't even wait out the crowd to get a better look. I'll be sharpening my elbows over the next couple of days.

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Lucky me. I get to go to the Mustang reveal in Dearborn on Thursday. Not the one with the press, but right after at 10:30 at the same venue. So I get to touch, see, and feel if I can wedge my way in which is usually a big problem in these events. Lots of people crowding the vehicle(s), and then they have a time limit so you can't even wait out the crowd to get a better look. I'll be sharpening my elbows over the next couple of days.

 

I wish I could say that you have my sympathy, having to deal with all of that BS! :)

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hmmm....not so sure, shots I have seen show two large intake openings in the grill....front three quarters shows those rear haunches Ford has been hiding....I will STILL bitch about overhangs though...sheesh, rear end must be cantilevered......

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hmmm....not so sure, shots I have seen show two large intake openings in the grill....front three quarters shows those rear haunches Ford has been hiding....I will STILL bitch about overhangs though...sheesh, rear end must be cantilevered......

 

Could the two intake openings you have seen be for a different model/engine combination? In my opinion, and from the Autoweek photos, it does look smaller (length) even with the rear overhang.

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