http://www.gizmag.com/e-quickie-electric-v...smission/16346/

I can't imagine how this will ever be more efficient than keeping the power plant on-board the vehicle.

I also can't imagine how they thought it's a good idea to take car shaped like THAT and name it an 'eQuickie'. (And don't tell me you didn't think the same thing.)

Like the Ford Nucleon did?

well you remove the weight of the stored fuel and can shrink the engine down to what is basically a EM maintained flywheel (and electric engines are more direct in their application of torque anyways). Right now much of the issue with electric vehicles is the need for heavy batteries to go the whole distance. With a system like this one can reduce or eliminate these batteries as one will only be off the grid for the short hops between parking space and highway. This especially of parking spots also provide charging.

Part of me wonders just how much power they're burning off to power these cars. Is it worth using a GridGuide if every major metro area needs a second or third power plant to keep up with the voltage demand?

This is true, but you have to account for the expense of laying down these conductors on EVERY ROAD you intend for these vehicles to use under any circumstances + supporting infrastructure (transformers, etc.), the energy lost from sending that electricity over so much of a distance (that cost is considerable), cost for backup power sources for disaster recovery, all contrasted against the fact that you will be catering to less than 5% of commuters for the foreseeable future.

As a commuter, this vehicle is only useful to me if they have tracks to every place I might conceivably drive. If it goes to work but not to the grocery store, I'm going to buy a gas-powered car. And since I only need one vehicle, that's ALL I'm going to buy. Since this project will start out extremely local, it means I have to choose between a system which is as reliable as the government that supports it, requires insurance, costs upwards of $1,000 (probably more), may be phased out, and can only reach a limited set of locations, or I can buy a VERY nice bike for $400.

The only real use I can see for this right now is on limited campuses, arcologies, or corporate towns, or limited-use vehicles like parking maid vans.

Anyone else see in the design of this car a hint of the Starship Enterprise which would come out on TV a decade later?

Gas engines are extremely inefficient when compared to a nuclear power plant. There would be energy lost in transit, and by excess grid link charger nodes on, but even with power lost over distance electricity though wires is still very efficient. And grid linked power can be made to be on where and when it is needed.

Besides it does not really matter that it may be less handy than gas. By 2070 there will not be that much oil left. Biofuels will be an option but they are not very cost effective and efficient. In Shadowrun's 2070 they are probably made from oil producing algae grown in vats. Still not all that efficient but it would be efficient on space taken. Plus it still makes green house gasses.

I'll believe that when I see the math. I highly doubt you lose more energy with a rice cooker than you do transporting electricity over 100 miles, across a giant, distributed grid (muchless, one with redundancies and backups).

Of course, Shadowrun is a different setup. The Crash gave an opportunity to rebuild things 'right', and the whole setting is ultimately fictional.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/w...trol%29_Engines

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/w...smission#Losses

You also have to take into account that the gasoline is basically sent on rail cars and from there driven out to gas stations and that is not even counting the steps taken to ship the crude oil half way across the world and refine it. That is a high amount of energy lost in transit. Though to be fair powerplants have overhead costs for fuel too.

I have no idea how efficient the grid link system is but it is competing against a very inefficient system.

Not necessarily. Pipeline ships a lot of petro around the world. Sends it to the boats, or in the 'States case, from the Alaskan wilderness to California refineries, then across to fuel distro centers over the West. Heck, I think we've got a gas pipeline heading here into Saint Loouie, givin' us the best prices in the country.

And here I am, runnin' diesel.

I don't dare imagining a crash test at 50km/h. Poor dummy.

You mean the guy driving the electric-powered coffin?

No, wait, a Coffin would probably survive the impact better...

"Modern gasoline engines have an average efficiency of about 20% to 30% when used to power a car. In other words, of the total heat energy of gasoline, 70 to 80% is ejected as heat from the exhaust, as mechanical sound energy, or consumed by the motor (friction, air turbulence, heat through the cylinder walls or cylinder head, and work used to turn engine equipment and appliances such as water and oil pumps and electrical generator), "

That last bit is important, won't change (at least not significantly) and takes a significant portion of that 'inefficiency'. Whether you have an oil power plant 100 miles away converting oil to heat to electricity, transmitting it over 100 miles of power lines and into embedded rails to your vehicle's engine and to your radio, or if it's an internal combusion engine turning mechanical power to run a dynamo to power your radio, you'll be using the same amount of energy to run your radio regardless (and the same with your power breaks, power steering, so on and so forth).

The only significant difference in the cost of fuel shipment is, instead of shipping from refineries to power plants, they have to ship it to a number of distributed gas stations.

And all of this still ignores the fact that my diesel truck runs on 100% of roads, and a good deal of not-roads. This electric car will run on maybe 95% of gridguide roads (accounting for failures), and 0% of non-gridguide roads. That's a huge detail.