ZENN Cars and the Miracle Battery

[Nokturnal]

Is this all too good to be true? An electric car made in Quebec that you can't buy in Canada.


About The ZENN Car
http://www.zenncars.com/



What sets Zero Emission No Noise car apart from the crowd? Unlike other neighborhood electric vehicles, it has the form and features of a real car: it’s a fully-enclosed, three-door hatchback with a performance-proven, steel-reinforced body. That translates into a tremendous safety advantage.

ZENN not only looks like a car; it performs like one, too. Equipped with front-wheel drive, brisk acceleration and capable of achieving a regulated maximum speed of 25 mph (40 km/h), it keeps pace with traffic on local streets to get you where you’re going safely and in good time. And ZENN’s battery efficiency gives you the freedom to cover a lot of ground: approximately 35 miles per charge (56 kilometres).

At the same time, ZENN delivers the environmental advantages of an electric vehicle, generating zero greenhouse-gas emissions. Compare that to the 657 pounds of regulated tailpipe emissions produced by the typical gas-powered car every year.

And ZENN is protected by a comprehensive one-year warranty, the best on the market for its class. That warranty is backed by our commitment to fully support ZENN owners, day in and day out.

About It's Battery
http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/18086/

The company boldly claims that its system, a kind of battery-ultracapacitor hybrid based on barium-titanate powders, will dramatically outperform the best lithium-ion batteries on the market in terms of energy density, price, charge time, and safety. Pound for pound, it will also pack 10 times the punch of lead-acid batteries at half the cost and without the need for toxic materials or chemicals, according to the company.

There is a petition on the ZENN site to help make the vehicles legal to drive in Canada: http://www.zenncars.com/letsgo/

If they are safe, and keep up with urban traffic, I am all for them. And if they eventually make a highway speed vehicle, then that's great too, but if they can't keep up on the road then they could pose a safety risk. And if the battery technology lives up to it's claims, we could be looking at a massive revolution in the auto industry.

[Nokturnal]

Here is a great clip from the Rick Mercer Report on this little car:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8M88k6Ipp3c

[_uaioe]

I saw the Rick Mercer report clip last week, and it makes me want to write to Alberta's transport minister to get this thing approved.

It seems like a great little car!

[UrsBerto]

That is crazy. How well would it do for our extreme cold temps that we are having right now. If they could increase the km per charge I would be sold. When you have kids it is super easy to run 100+km a day.

[le' Chaud Karl]

The idae is excellent too bad mst of the power in Alta is from coal so your just transfereing emmisions from one place to another. ti will keep the smog down in cites and the no nosie thing is so sweet

[Nokturnal]

As for emissions from the coal plant vs driving a car, these stats are pretty impressive:

Quote:
By some estimates, it would only require $9 worth of electricity for an EESU-powered vehicle to travel 500 miles, versus $60 worth of gasoline for a combustion-engine car.


I would love to be able to know how much pollution is produced in $9 worth of electricity vs $60 worth of gas. Regardless, there is no reason why both issues can not receive attention and be corrected: electric cars and carbon retrofits to existing coal plants (the retrofit technology is profitable and available: http://skyonic.com/whatWeDo.php )

And it's not even really this specific model that is worth all the attention, it's the ability to buy these TYPES of vehicles that is important. Without opening a market which can then allow for a demand and hopefully a maturation of these types of vehicles, we will never get away from gas guzzlers.

One more important point of a fully electric car over even a hybrid, it has WAY few parts (no muffler, filters, gas tank, etc), is WAY simpler to maintain and WAY cheaper to keep running.

[Nokturnal]

Not to scoop my own thread, but here is another really cool car that runs on compressed air: http://www.theaircar.com/

It's seems fairly noisy however, and of course would still need electricity to compress the air in it's tanks.

[Cheshire]

The catch to the Zenn car is the classification of it.

Basically, the makers of the car have to convince the lawmakers that it's not a golf cart. If they can do that then the first step is complete. Alberta transportation basically says that golf carts, atvs, and such are not licensed and are not to be driven on provincial or municipal roads. Private roads, offroad... sure. So distinguishing this as a separate type of vehicle is key.

Besides that, the different cities need to look at safety zoning. What roads will this or will this not be allowed on (picture someone doing 40kph on Deerfoot).

How does this car stand against crash tests? Against other 40kph vehicles? Against a 100kph vehicle? Lots of questions. Must seek answers.

This car is on it's way to clearing the various bureaucratic hurdles. Would be a neat inner city car.

[anglophobe]

Quote:
By some estimates, it would only require $9 worth of electricity for an EESU-powered vehicle to travel 500 miles, versus $60 worth of gasoline for a combustion-engine car.


I would love to be able to know how much pollution is produced in $9 worth of electricity vs $60 worth of gas.

I could look up the stats, and figure it out, but honestly, it'll be lower due to
1) the coal requires much less processing than oil-> gasoline, so there are less emissions there, and
2) power plants usually run at decently high efficiency, so on a Barrel of Oil Equivalent, you probably get more power.
Ohh, and Alberta is currently just under 50% powered by Coal, and this has been steadily dropping over the last 20 years (most new installed capacity has been natural gas)

[gregsaint]

I could look up the stats, and figure it out, but honestly, it'll be lower due to
1) the coal requires much less processing than oil-> gasoline, so there are less emissions there, and
2) power plants usually run at decently high efficiency, so on a Barrel of Oil Equivalent, you probably get more power.
Ohh, and Alberta is currently just under 50% powered by Coal, and this has been steadily dropping over the last 20 years (most new installed capacity has been natural gas)

Can't forget to factor in transmission losses vs. pipeline maintainance.

Transport of electrical energy along powerlines from, say, Lake Wabumun to Edmonton, costs a significant amount due to transmission losses. Not sure how much this loss is in comparison to pipeline/pumping expenses (and other costs associated with getting the gas to the pump) though.

I guess if we all went electrical, we wouldn't really need gas stations anymore though, and gas stations have typically had a terrible impact on our urban landscape. There's a big empty lot on whyte ave in edmonton thats had to sit there for years due to the pollution from a gas station.

[anglophobe]

Can't forget to factor in transmission losses vs. pipeline maintainance.

Transport of electrical energy along powerlines from, say, Lake Wabumun to Edmonton, costs a significant amount due to transmission losses. Not sure how much this loss is in comparison to pipeline/pumping expenses (and other costs associated with getting the gas to the pump) though.

I guess if we all went electrical, we wouldn't really need gas stations anymore though, and gas stations have typically had a terrible impact on our urban landscape. There's a big empty lot on whyte ave in edmonton thats had to sit there for years due to the pollution from a gas station.

Transmission losses are less than you'd think, about 3% per 1000km, on high voltage lines.
As for pumping, with oil/NG, you pay a portion of what you put into the pipe to cover the cost of the pumping it, this will vary upon distance (I'm not as familiar with the totals, I work for an electricity company, not a NG or oil one.
Gas stations do have huge clean up cots associated with them, although really, power stations (coal, oil, gas, whatever) also do... there are some that are just sitting there, because the clean up costs are so high.
One big issue right now is companies trying to figure out how to incorporate these external costs into the actual production costs of their outputs.

[epidote]

Besides that, the different cities need to look at safety zoning. What roads will this or will this not be allowed on (picture someone doing 40kph on Deerfoot).

How does this car stand against crash tests? Against other 40kph vehicles? Against a 100kph vehicle? Lots of questions. Must seek answers.

This car is on it's way to clearing the various bureaucratic hurdles. Would be a neat inner city car.

Yeah, this is my main problem with the car. A car that can only travel up to 40kph? - you would still need to have 2 vehicles, and it seems like a lot of materials/production and expense to buy a whole other car just to drive to the grocery store/booze hut/shopping centre. I honestly can't see it being cost efficient in the long run.

I put in some very rough numbers on their 'cost savings calculator', and if I choose the cheapest electricity cost ($0.050 per KWH), I'd only save $50 per year compared to my Nissan Versa. Definitely not good enough savings for me to consider such a purchase - with the basement price of $12750, I'd have to drive the car for 255 years in order to make my money back (notably, this does not consider the carbon emissions that will be saved, but to be honest I am already driving a car with excellent mileage and I feel like I'm doing my part in that sense).

Also, what happens if it dies while you're out driving it? It says it runs only on electricity - is there some kind of backup system? Would you have to get it towed to the nearest electrical outlet?

All in all I am happy that such strides are being made, of course. I look forward to these technologies becoming more and more viable all the time.

[epidote]

I guess if we all went electrical, we wouldn't really need gas stations anymore though, and gas stations have typically had a terrible impact on our urban landscape. There's a big empty lot on whyte ave in edmonton thats had to sit there for years due to the pollution from a gas station.

Oh man. We learned all about that gas station in my Contaminant Hydrogeology class - it's super gross. There's a giant hydrocarbon plume in the ground that stretches from that old Esso all the way to the North Saskatchewan River - gross, eh?

They've completely dug up and replaced the soil on that lot 3 times since the Esso was torn down in an effort to clean it up but it'll still be years until they can build on it again. If you look closely through the fence you can see all the peizometer's (the white pvc tubes sticking out of the ground) - they use those to measure what's going on with the groundwater and how much hydrocarbon is still being degassed from the subsurface. Ewwww.

[gregsaint]

I guess if we all went electrical, we wouldn't really need gas stations anymore though, and gas stations have typically had a terrible impact on our urban landscape. There's a big empty lot on whyte ave in edmonton thats had to sit there for years due to the pollution from a gas station.

Oh man. We learned all about that gas station in my Contaminant Hydrogeology class - it's super gross. There's a giant hydrocarbon plume in the ground that stretches from that old Esso all the way to the North Saskatchewan River - gross, eh?

They've completely dug up and replaced the soil on that lot 3 times since the Esso was torn down in an effort to clean it up but it'll still be years until they can build on it again. If you look closely through the fence you can see all the peizometer's (the white pvc tubes sticking out of the ground) - they use those to measure what's going on with the groundwater and how much hydrocarbon is still being degassed from the subsurface. Ewwww.

Ewwww indeed.

[Nokturnal]

OK, I agree, this car is simply too fucking slow.

I hate to admit it because it's so close to being a great idea.