The Jaguar C-X75 (not to be confused with te Siemens CX75 cell phone) will go almost 70 miles on its battery pack, using one 145kW electric motor attached to each wheel, accelerate faster than most hot cars, and reach top speeds that are greater than most fast cars. You can plug it into you wall and thus fuel it off of your local coal burning plant or nuke (yes, folks, plug-in electric cars are terribly inefficient because the electricity is made miles away from where it is used) or, for more efficiency than most (or perhaps any?) hybrid, the car has two internal microturbine engines that will run on a wide range of fuel including biodiesel, compressed natural gas, etc., to charge the batteries, extending the range of the vehicle to about 560 miles. The turbines can also directly power the wheels directly if needed.
The seats are fixed, but the controls move. That’s interesting. Makes me wonder if we’ve been doing it wrong all these years….
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Excellent. Now build a rational-scale passenger-car version with a sane price tag…
But can it fly?
“(yes, folks, plug-in electric cars are terribly inefficient because the electricity is made miles away from where it is used)”
I don’t think I buy that,the cost in power of zipping the electricity at 11,000 volts down power lines cannot be that bad, especially when compared with putting gasoline in tankers and delivering it to gas stations.
Come on now, surely you understand physics better than that. I am disappoint. Your argument may hold true for DC electricity, but you know that AC suffers very little loss of voltage across long distances.
Also, you’re late to this party. Check out Tesla Motors, they run all-electric, are high-performance, and can have battery packs that run up to 700km on one charge.
Point source pollution has always been easier to manage and mitigate than non-point sources. If all electricity was coal generated and we had electric cars, we’d be better off I think.
I probably originally stated it incorrectly, but what this is the point I’m trying to get across: I’ve never, once seen this: “And once engineers have implemented this or that design, you’ll just be able to plug your car in to the wall and get your electricity that way” followed by any discussion at all of the fact that that electricity is not free, and has to come from somewhere.
Delivering gasoline to the station is part of the cost, but it is incorrect to assume that there is not a cost to producing the elctrictiy! I live 50 miles from where the electricity I use is produced, and it’s a coal plant. Billions of tons of coal are transported int his country in railroad cars across thousands of miles and burned in old inefficient poorly regulated plants to produce electricity that is then transmitted to my house. Gas, on the other and, is pumped out of the Gulf of Mexico and pumped via pipes to my house.
If I have a super efficient gas to electricity turbine in my Jag, I’m going to power it more efficiently by running the gassed-up turbine than by using electricity made in the coal plant.
There are probably situations in which one system is better than the other. What is NOT true is that getting rid of internal combustion engines and plugging everything in is somehow magically more efficient. That’s just what they (certain “they’s”, not other “they’s”) want you to think.
Popular Science seems to think that this concept car hasn’t even been made yet (link). Could it be one of those TGTBT/marketing hypes (this one for millionaires of course) with little reality behind it?
Toaster @4: actually DC is more efficient than AC for long haul power distribution (since you don’t get reactive losses). Loss can be well below 5% per 1000km, though that doesn’t include conversion losses.
I want to see the complete package be sold:
Vehicle including its solar carport package.
Buy the vehicle/solar package, install the system, and get paid back by the power company for whatever excess you produce over what you use.
Maybe offer a “white roof/green roof” system so the base membrane is a cool white roof, on parts of which a green roof can be planted, and on other parts put integrated lightweight solar panels, something along these lines.
And build in recycling for everything involved.
Oh, this isn’t fantasy:
http://www.coolflatroof.com/ib-solar-roof.php
http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?fuseaction=find_a_product.showProductGroup&pgw_code=RO
After all, most cars spend most of the time parked. Using the parking space ought to be part of the cost/benefit.
Yes, great concept car.
Jaguar has produced another plaything for the super-rich.
While teasing us with such great statistics and design, we’re also told the car will never actually be put into production.
So, once again, our energy issues have the promised to be solved someday in the future, if you’re one of a handfull of billionaires who has enough clout to get on the miniscule waiting list. Even then, what you get is more conversation-piece than anything else.
Wonderful.
I’m not knocking it, just saying it isn’t any kind of solution, it’s a piece of concept art.
And Greg is right about the rush to replace gasoline with coal-powered electricity. While it’s true that the carbon emissions will no longer come out of your tailpipe, don’t be shocked when next time you drive to the mountains for a hike, the top of your favorite mountain has been blown off.
The oil barons know their time is coming. In spite of all the denialism posturing, the Big Boys secretly know full well the Oil Age is ending.
On the other hand, Big Coal can keep putting up a nasty fight, arm-twisting politicians to stall on stimulating the renewables economy, while pushing through contracts for ever more stripping and mountaintop blasting.
If it’s mountain-top removal that’s powering your beautiful plaything, then you are NOT part of the solution at that point, either.
PS, these would be appropriately carport-sized for people who’d buy an electric Jaguar:
2009 Solar Decathlon …. Twenty teams … competing to build the best Solar Home
http://www.coolflatroof.com/flat-roofing-blog/solar-panels-flat-roof/
Fixed seats with moveable controls has been done for decades in racing cars. They did it for several reasons, including rigidity of the seat itself (the less your body moves around the better control you’ll have) and rigidity of the total structure (which bolting the seat in helps). As a passenger car feature it has the pluses that it brings to racing, but also some minuses in how much the seat can be varied to suit different drivers. Racing cars use customized seats, fitted to the driver so this is not a problem there.
Bottom line: fixed seats are like gullwing doors; they often show up in show cars, rarely in final street cars.
OK, I will admit that the underbody Venturi is awesome, and that I wasn’t even addressing the costs of power generation itself. However, another point that is rather important here is simply this: A sustainable future will have very, very few cars in it, and even fewer highways.
Whatever. I was reading about a car just like this in Popular Mechanics when I was a teenager. Once I realized that nothing in that magazine every actually came to fruition I quit reading it. Regular sci-fi was more entertaining.
Hate to think how much a single micro-turbine jet engine will set you back. I could lift the jet engine used in a Bell helicopter. It cost about $200 K.
Economy of scale counts. That’s one reason a 777 only has two large turbines instead of hundreds of small ones.
I’m not sure who they is but nobody denies that if you are getting your electricity from a coal plant, that a Prius sized electric car will produce more CO2 than a Prius, although less than your average car. That’s not true if you use the average CO2 intensity of our grid in your calculation.
Should we wait until the grid is carbon free, then start producing electric cars? Doesn’t it make more sense to do both in parallel?
Natural gas still produces about ten times more CO2 than nuclear. And when you account for the power used to compress it into liquid, it is not much better than coal.
A significant number of people who will be early adopters of the new electric cars will put solar panels on their roofs specifically to silence the critics, and they will be emulated because they will be the cool kids on the block.
I so hope they move this into production. It would be a sweet ass vehicle to own or lease.
That’s only true for the same voltage. The advantage of AC is that it’s very easy to convert voltages. Whereas with DC conversion losses are practically irrelevant.
A sustainable future will have very, very few cars in it, and even fewer highways.
You can’t have fewer highways than cars. Well, you can, but “highway” is just one big continuous ribbon of pavement with different numbers assigned to different parts. It’s like saying “we will have fewer air than lungs”
But yes, even as the number of people goes up the number of cars must go down. Well, miles diven, anyway. In my humble version of a fantasy existance for myself and my family, we live where at least one of us can walk to work and we have three cars for two drivers: A Suburu Forrest Hybrid for going fishing or driving somewhere far away (instead of flying); a smart car for the one commuter, and a pickup. We’d only use the pickup to recycle, get stuff at the hardware store, etc. and the key would be kept in a secret place and all my friends would know where it was so they could also use it, and thus not have to own a largish car for the occasional need.
I know some people who need to tow something about once a month on average, so they have two cars capable of towing stuff, just in case they forget and end up with the wrong car at the moment they need to tow. That’s a little like carrying around a down coat all year in case you accidentally fly to the other hemisphere or something.
“Natural gas still produces about ten times more CO2 than nuclear. ”
There, I was just pointing out that the delivery cost comparison was oriface-originated. A liquid or gas in a pipe across essentially flat land is pretty darn efficient. This is one of the attractions of hydrogen, of course. You can make it a little windmill or solar ‘shops’ and people can load up on it more or less like they do now with gas. You just need to make a network to cover differential production.
“Should we wait until the grid is carbon free, then start producing electric cars? Doesn’t it make more sense to do both in parallel?”
I think it makes sense to develop everything in parallel. Very few technologies ever come close to doing/not doing what pre-implementation seemingly smart people seem so willing to tell us they will/won’t do.
“A significant number of people who will be early adopters of the new electric cars will put solar panels on their roofs specifically to silence the critics, and they will be emulated because they will be the cool kids on the block.”
Yes, and with removable headlights, you can have the lights shining on the panels over night to keep the car charged!
Azkyroth: None of this matters (other than the interesting fact that the power companies totally control the wikipedia articles on all these related topics). The smart grid will be the solution. Right?
I would agree with the orifice originated part of that statement. But the point is moot if you can’t capitalize on that natural gas once it reaches your house to reduce CO2 more than an electric line from say, a nuclear enhanced renewable grid (NERG).
Hydrogen gas takes up a lot of space. Cooling it close to absolute zero so you can carry it around negates its advantages. More efficient to use that solar generated electricity directly.
Hopefully the panels would be grid tied, because panels that aren’t have little value. They spin your meter backwards. From a power plant’s view, an array of panels on a house is akin to having a magic wand that turns off all of your neighbors electricity on sunny days. You charge your car at night when demand and costs are lower off the grid, which would eventually be smaller and cleaner, given enough adopters of panels.
Here in Seattle the cool car to own (if you were liberal and progressive) several years back was the Subaru Outback, Eddie Bauer edition. The parking lot of our REI flagship store was full of forest green and earth tone versions of it. Today you can walk across that parking garage on the tops of Priuses.
My family lives where one of us does not have to commute. The other only commutes twice a week. In addition, I ride a hybrid electric bike of my own design for all in town errands Google Ultimate Seattle Hybrid.
One of our cars is a Prius. We also take it on camping and fishing trips. Works great with a cargo carrier on top although mileage drops to 40 mpg from 50.
I also have a 1989 Cherokee with 160 K miles on it, which sits idle until needed to pull a trailer or whatever. I call it my motorized wheelbarrow.
The Jaguar is a cool looking concept car – designed for the paris auto show. I’d point out that Peugot made a similarly cool car for that show.
http://www.egmcartech.com/2010/09/21/2010-paris-preview-peugeot-ex1-an-electric-concept-car-that-holds-some-world-records/
But the point is moot if you can’t capitalize on that natural gas once it reaches your house to reduce CO2 more than an electric line from say, a nuclear enhanced renewable grid (NERG).
Sure, but in the construction “is moot if”, the if cancels out the is and thus nothing is moot. Of course, since this Jag doesn’t really exist, the mooting is mooted as well.
Hydrogen gas takes up a lot of space. Cooling it close to absolute zero so you can carry it around negates its advantages. More efficient to use that solar generated electricity directly.
I’m not saying it’s a good idea (that remains to be seen)… I’m saying that there is an attraction to bottled pure energy (sort of) that can be produced from any source (as opposed to fossil fuels that so far have not been easily cheaply small scaly synthesized efficiently)
the Subaru Outback, Eddie Bauer edition. The parking lot of our REI flagship store was full of forest green and earth tone versions of it.
In Minnesota the cook car to own isa F-750 pickup truck with a hemi and external exhaust pipes on the side of the cab. I think it has nine wheels and can go from zero to 50 in six minutes while pulling a trailer full of swine.
But, at the REI parking lot (and we have a big-huge REI just south of town) … the same exact pattern, Outbacks –> Prius and now …> smart cars. So far only one smart car and I happen to know who owns it.
But, really, the Forrester is more efficient … those Outback driving yuppies are really all about luxory and not really about saving the environment.
Sounds like you have a very effective fleet. I hadn’t considered the hybrid bike. I wonder how the batteries would do in the cold.
I don’t care if works as well as the company says it does or not, I still want one, and kudos to them for even trying to do a hybrid concept car! I was really afraid that the new owners of Jaguar would ruin everything, but for now that does not appear to be the case.
The Jag can deliver messages at ~200mph. The Siemens CX75 cell phone can send messages (depending upon the medium) at speeds approaching that of light. I’m sorry but there’s no competition at all. I’ll stick with the cell phone….
Actually, the Forrester and the Outback are almost identical in efficiency, at least for our uses. We kept track. The Forrester is just much more comfortable. However, now that we both walk to work, it will likely be a long time before we get to go back to a Forrester.
And that Smart belongs to a couple who run almost all their errands with a bike trailer instead of using any car.
I’m surprised you didn’t find the Outback more comfortable. It has way fancier suspension/seats/etc.
They are very close in both rated mileage and reported mileage in places where people provide “real world” estimates, but of the two, the outback is heavier and has more horsepower, and is longer and wider. The Forrester is a tiny bit taller, and it is possible that the outback is slightly more aerodynamic. Physics says that the outback should have notably lower mileage in city driving but may make up the difference on the highway.
Of course, taking off the roof rack and selecting certain tires will probably make a bigger difference than actually exists between the two models.
But I have to admit, we did not buy the forrester vs. the outback based on any of these differences. The 5K difference in price made up our mind for us!
And we only ended up with an Outback the second time around because we needed a car right then, and we couldn’t find a used Forrester with everything we wanted. Of course, that means we were comparing higher-end Forresters to Outbacks anyway. But I still find any Forrester to just “fit right.”
I think it’s the upright design of the Forrester that I find more comfortable. It certainly makes a difference to a tall guy like Ben. Now if we could just get a good diesel hybrid model. Maybe by the time we need another car.
It seems quite cost effective!! I’ll buy it when it will be launched in the market.
http://stimelexreviews.com/