Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, January 18, 1994 TAG: 9402250025
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Who hasn't? That's part of the problem with getting people to take the idea of electric cars seriously: One too many battery-operated Turbo-something- or-others dying ignominiously an hour after it's unwrapped under the Christmas tree.
Would you want to get out on the highway, among the tractor-trailer rigs, in a car running on a battery? Or do you think of electric cars as cartoonists have imagined them, with really long extension cords running down driveways and off into the distance?
Actual prototypes of electric cars have been more reliable and realistic, despite public perceptions. General Motors has built one that can travel 80 miles on a single charge. But even this, with the four to eight hours needed to recharge its battery, is seen as a vehicle of limited practical use, for short-distance driving at moderate speeds in good climates.
These problems are associated, though, with electric cars operated on the familiar lead-acid battery. Now an auto developer in Detroit is working with a Washington state company, American Flywheel Systems Inc., to produce an electric car that is powered by a flywheel battery. This kind stores kinetic, rather than chemical, energy.
Flywheel batteries have a range of about 350 miles per charge, and can be recharged in only 15 minutes. They also have a 25-year life cycle, compared to three to five years for a chemical battery, and are unaffected by low temperatures, don't corrode or produce toxic waste, won't explode and require little maintenance. And the flywheel battery-powered car can accelerate from 0 to 60 in 6.5 seconds.
It'll cost $1 million to make the first car, but the developers expect a mass-produced model to cost about $30,000. Still steep for average car-buyers, but not out of range for the luxury-car set.
Developing a practical electric-powered car is important to the nation's overall efforts to maintain a livable environment and to reduce dependence on foreign oil. California and the Northeast, areas so heavily populated that residents' gasoline-powered vehicles are making the air unbreathable, are facing zero-emission vehicle regulations by 1998. They will require that a percentage of cars sold not emit pollutants.
Automakers are trying to fight the regulations, saying they can't build a cost-efficient electric car. But flywheel technology may be on the road to doing just that. And there is potential for its pollution-free benefits to be extended to a range of needs, such as storing energy for utilities to use during peak demand hours.
So let's stop the whining. Automakers would be in a better competitive position in the future if they spent more energy making their industry more flexible and open to change, including in the power sources that drive their cars.
by CNB