Phoenix Motorcars manufactures zero-emission, freeway-speed fleet vehicles.

[madokie]

http://www.phoenixmotorcars.com/
It is an early leader in the mass production of full-function, green electric trucks and SUVs for commercial fleet use. Based in Ontario, California, Phoenix Motorcars uses the NanoSafe™ battery, a non-toxic, all-battery solution to eliminate noise and toxic vehicle emissions that contribute to air pollution.

Green Fleet Advantages:

Zero emission
All-battery power NanoSafe™ production battery pack system
100+ miles per charge
Speeds of 95 m.p.h. carrying five passengers and full payload
High torque: 0 to 60 m.p.h. in 10 seconds
Long battery pack life: 250,000 miles/12+ years
Off board charger: 10 minutes to recharge to 95% capacity
On board charger: 6 hours to recharge from 220V plug-in
California Air Resources Board (CARB)-Certified
Available configurations:
Mid-Size 4-Door Pickup (SUT)
Mid-Size SUV

[Massacure]

1. I call Bushit.

What a way to conveniently omit the fact that the emissions comes from a smokestack instead of a tailpipe.

[GreenPartyVoter]

2. With solar getting more effective and cheaper all the time we could

be looking at an excellent marriage of the two technologies. I think that would make it worthwhile.

[Spider Jerusalem]

3. No, it wouldn't

manufacturing solar panels or photovoltaic cells requires the expenditure of energy, usually from fossil fuels, not only to produce the finished product but to obtain the raw materials (which, for solar panels at least, include petroleum-derived compounds). Solar power = not currently a viable alternative to petroleum. Electric power in general = not currently a viable alternative to petroleum. In fact, to be perfectly brutal, there ARE no viable alternatives, and there is no way that those of us in industrialised nations will be able to continue to enjoy our current way of life if we wish to also reduce carbon emissions; and given depletion of oil reserves, we may not be able to in any case. Yet people still hold out the misguided hope that technology will save us from the error of our ways and allow us to go on much as we have; it would be funny, were it not tragic.

[Porcupine]

5. So it's a compressed Hemp laptop......

you're writing to us on you say? IC chip is a specially bio-engineered brain coral huh. No?

Who woulda guessed. I haven't run into very many hard core Amish on this board. Most of us are slouching towards the day when we have to turn the heaters off, put the gas-burner on blocks and call it a greenhouse.

No virgins here.

[Spider Jerusalem]

6. What the fuck are you talking about, anyway?

"Hard core Amish"? No...but the fact that I happen to be making use of all the modern conveniences our current technology and lifestyle provide DOESN'T mean that I have any reason to be particularly optimistic about the long-term viability of that lifestyle, or about the probability that technology is going to come up with some wondrous deus ex machina that WILL make it viable over the long term.

[Porcupine]

7. In the long term we're all dead.

In the short term demonstrating that we can have vehicles that are comfortable and useful that dump even 1/2 the CO2 into the air is a plus.

It doesn't help us one damn bit to tell people who commute an hour to work each way to get out of the car and bicycle. The mortgage company will not understand they opted for a new "green" lifestyle.

Until we can set up a stepwise plan to switch the whole freaking economy over and prove that it pays for itself along the way we are screwed. The US federal gov't is not helping us small fish out.

There are projects that have been proven to be self financing with adequate access to low-interest financing:

1)Wind Power
2) Geo-exchange HVAC for residential buildins under 6 units.
3)Stored solar and adsorption chiller plants for large buildings commercial and residential. Also time of day load shifting saves $$$
4)Sewage, cattle, hog and chicken waste to methane cogeneration or methane production.
5)Landfill methane production
6)Solar thermal-(water heating and steam/stirling electric systems)
7)Light rail.(economic costs over regions. Not neccesarily rider cost returned to transit agencies)
8)Replacing lighting from incandescent to CFL (soon LED). From a building maintenance point of view these pay just on service cost defrayment.
9)Organic food production.
10)etc, etc, etc,

There really isn't any option where we get to keep flying jets and driving cars and still balance GHG's. If we don't get people thinking about alternatives at some level we might as well start walking to Alaska to get ahead of the rush. The inland passage would be amazing if summer temperatures ever got above the 70's and the water wasn't so damn cold.

[Moby Grape]

8. an electric car would be a blessing to humanity

kinda sad Honda squished all their EVs,
and Toyota discontinued their electric pickup.

[Javaman]

16. Honda? you meant GM, right? nt

[Moby Grape]

17. links to the Honda EV+ crushmobile ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_EV_Plus

http://www.hondaev.org/acar.html

more available,if you still don't believe me

[Javaman]

18. wow, never knew about that one. Thanks for the link :) nt

[kestrel91316]

15. Yeah! Production of wind power is known to be a HUGE polluter.

[LSK]

22. the manufacture of ANYTHING can potentially produce fossils fuels

[One_Life_To_Give]

11. Solar too expensive, use wind or hydro

From a cost standpoint I beleive Hydro power would be most efficient. But we probably won't be building much more of that in this country anyway. So for zero emissions you w3ould want to go with something like wind power. Let the truck charge up on the evening breeze and it will be ready to go in the morning.

Granted in the short term 50+% of the electricity will come from coal. But both the types of vehicals we drive and the sources of electricity will change over time.

[madokie]

9. where do you get all this info about the emissions, share with me

last I checked the emissions from a smokestake to make a car go 100 miles is minuscule to what an internal combustion engine spews for the same distance. I guess we can just forget about trying to do anything about our energy problem and it will just simply go away. I say to you, Bullshit, this thinking is why nothing is getting done. Well something is being done in spite of this trash thinking.

[Massacure]

10. Minuscule? Yea right.

A power plant is only able to convert about 33% of the heat energy it gets from coal into useful work to generate electricity. An internal combustion engine will convert about 25% of the heat energy it gets from gasoline or into useful work.

However, the transmission lines in the United States are only about 93 percent efficient, plus a transformer is about 90% efficient, plus batteries are only about 80 efficient.

So for the electric car you get 0.33 * 0.93 * 0.9 * 0.8 = 22% efficiency.

There are inefficiencies in a car's transmission too, so in the end they are both about the same efficiency.

Sure smokestacks can remove heavy metals and most sulfur, but most fuel today doesn't have lead and is very low in sulfur anyways; and of course there is no smokestack in the world that can deal with carbon dioxide.

People who promote electric cars are playing a shell game. Out of sight, out of mind.

[Moby Grape]

20. you are ignoring regen braking

in city driving,
an EV would cost next to nothing to run.

no idleing, along with some recovery of kinetic energy in braking.

btw, regen recovery, gets better
with a bigger electric motor and bigger batteries

gasoline and diesel,are the most costly fuels available.

[piedmont]

25. Also ignoring the fact that the gasoline doesn't magically appear in the tank.

Oil has to be pumped from the ground, transported, refined, the gasoline transported to distribution centers, transported again to gas stations, and THEN transported by the automobile before being used. There's A LOT of energy down the drain (and CO2 out the tailpipe) before the gasoline gets used. And coal plants aren't the only source of electricity for EVs. Wind, solar, nuclear, hydro-- all operate CO2-free.

[phantom power]

13. I have a couple comments

1) Although an electric car essentially defers emissions to a power plant, it can be as clean as the power-plant is. So, hypothetical widespread use of electric cars sets up an opportunity for truly emissions-free transportation, if we power our grid with emission-free generation.

2) In the case where power plants are not emission-free, a city using electric-cars would at least elimiate the localized smog problem, which is a health issue. Clearly, that provides no wider solution to global emissions problems like climate change.

[kestrel91316]

14. Yeah! Especially since there is NO WAY to generate electricity

with wind or solar or other renewables.

[NNadir]

19. There isn't any way to do this, in fact.

Not on the scale of gasoline. This can be recognized by thinking people very quickly.



All of the world's renewable energy combined would not provide a few weeks worth of gasoline.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/table17.xls

It is a form of ignorance to pretend that even a fraction of the world's oil can be replaced by renewable fuels, especially because the same damn people have been trotting out this fantasy for more than 50 years, with hoopla about hydrogen and/or electric cars thrown in, with very little meaningful result.

In general, people try to hide from these realities and to repeat rote ignorance about the grand renewable future that didn't come because of volumes of talk about it in 1997, and will not come through volumes of talk in 2017. One zillion JPak posts going back now years on this site have not caused one exajoule of solar electric power to be generated in any year of human history. This has not prevented the expenditure of brazillions of kilowatt-hours of electricity being burned to talk about how wonderful solar energy is.

[One_Life_To_Give]

23. Jury is still out on Possibilities of renewables

I don't think the current state of renewable energy is based solely upon possibilities, but rather on economics. It is simply cheaper to utilize, Hydro, Coal, Gas and Nuclear than to use alternatives. But this is also a different part of the problem from the subject post.

The use of electric vehicals does not assure what the primary fuel will be, since electricity is not a primary energy source. However it does help to free society from being tied to systems which must use fossil energy sources. I see no reason to piss on someones efforts for only developing a piece of the solution. With or without this vehical we still need to phase out use of oil, gas and coal. When we do the vehical will have obtained a greener footprint.

[madokie]

24. In a series of small steps we much continue our quest for sustainable energy

from a myriad of possibilities. electricity happens to be one of the best if not the best way to transport large sums of energy over long distances. Having said that it is possible to locate power plants in locals that have very little other viable options for helping in sustaining our way of life. But we must take these what seems like small steps to ultimately arrive at our destination. And yes electricity is only a vehicle on which to transport energy

[NNadir]

27. My that jury is taking a long time.

You would think that after 50 years they'd have a verdict.

Now, if I were on that jury, I might be inclined to believe there's been some perjury going on.

[One_Life_To_Give]

28. No economic reason for jury to come back

IF I can get abundant supplies of electricity for $0.02/kWhr. There is no incentive to run out and spend $0.10/kWhr for the same thing. Just because it hasn't been done does not mean it is not possible.

Climate change will radically alter the way people look at the world. It is still early and people are only just starting to become aware. When people start dying in large numbers the old equations for cost/benefit will be changed. Which technologies sucessfully compete in that new world have yet to be determined and perhaps invented.

On Edit. Reference the subject vehical. Wouldn't this be useful by the company at a generating facility. Seems to me that your facility and Hoover Dam would be both uses for this vehical with virtualy no CO2 production.

[LSK]

21. Arizona? California? Solar???

No way in those cloudy rainy climates.

:sarcasm:

[DKRC]

4. Reply to info request

Thank you for your interest in Phoenix Motorcars, Inc. We have
received a high volume of emails requesting additional information about our
zero-emission all-electric vehicles and appreciate every one of them.
We encourage you to visit our website www.PhoenixMotorcars.com to learn
more about our company, models and vehicle performance. We will be
contacting you shortly to answer any additional questions.

Thank you again.

Bryon Bliss
VP, Sales & Marketing


:thumbsup:

Definitely worth a look.
We were angry after watching Who Killed The Electric Car last week. I'm glad someone is pursuing this. And, I like the look of the truck and SUV on their site. I run less than 50 miles a day on average so this would be perfect for us.
YMMV of course.

[phantom power]

12. May I be the first to point out the unintentional irony in the brand "NanoSafe"

NanoSafe! Committed to one billionth of the safety!

[IDemo]

26. Debunking the Myth of EVs and Smokestacks

-complete article found at this link: (pdf alert!)

Many EV critics point out that charging thousands of EVs from aging coal plants will
increase greenhouse gases such as CO2 significantly. Although half the country uses coalfired
plants, EVs recharging from these facilities are predicted to produce less CO2 than
ICE vehicles. According to the World Resources Institute, EVs recharging from coal-fired
plants will reduce CO2 emissions in this country from 17 to 22 percent.

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) estimates that EV’s operating in the Los
Angeles Basin would produce 98 percent fewer hydrocarbons, 89 percent fewer oxides of
nitrogen, and 99 percent less carbon monoxide than ICE vehicles.

In a study conducted by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, EVs are
significantly cleaner over the course of 100,000 miles than ICE cars. The electricity
generation process produces less then 100 pounds of pollutants for EVs compared to 3000
pounds for ICE vehicles.

CO2 emissions are also significantly lower. Over the course of 100,000 miles, CO2
emissions from EVs are projected to be 10 tons versus 35 tons for ICE vehicles.

Many EV critics remain skeptical of such findings because California’s mix of power
plants is relatively clean compared to that in the rest of the country. However, in Arizona
where 67 percent of power plants are coal-fired, a study concluded that EVs would reduce
greenhouse gases such as CO2 by 71 percent.

Similar comparisons to those in California and Arizona can be found in the
Northeastern part of the country where the majority of power plants are coal-fired.

A study conducted by the Union of Concerned Scientists found that EVs in the
Northeast would reduce CO emissions by 99.8 percent, volatile organic compounds (VOC)
by 90 percent, NOx by 80 percent, and CO2 by as much as 60 percent.

According to a Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management (NESCAUM)
study, EVs result in significant reductions of carbon monoxide, greenhouse gases, and
ground level ozone in the region with magnitudes cleaner than even the cleanest ULEV.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In addition to the points brought out in the above article, the use of V2G ("Vehicle-to-Grid") technology, found in virtually all new production EV's, extends the role of a battery electric or plug-in hybrid. Instead of existing strictly as an energy sink, it can now be connected to the grid when the vehicle is not being driven, and supply (source) energy back to the grid. The power control capabilities found on a V2G vehicle also potentially allow the car to perform monitoring and control functions for the grid, if the grid allows.


V2G equipped 'Obvio 828e' from Brazil:

[GliderGuider]

29. Here's a link to a comment from someone who's done the numbers on EVs and GHGs

Look at the bottom of this page for the comment by Robert Tarzwell. His dislike of paragraph breaks makes the article hard to read, but the analysis seems fairly sound. His conclusion is that when all reasonable factors have been considered, an average EV produces about the same amount of stack GHGs as a modern ICE vehicle:

Typical rates shown for EV small cars is .3kwh / mile at the national average of 1.4 lb CO2 / kwh = .42 lb CO2 / mile. However when we add 10 per cent transmission loss and a charger efficiency of 92 percent as well as battery retention of 87 percentage your .3kwh energy per mile use is now a grid use of .42kwh at 1.4 lb CO2/kwh your electric car per mile total from the grid is .588 lbs CO2/ mile in contrast a new 525 BMW is stated by the manufacture as .65 lb CO2 /mile.

My contribution to the debate is that to replace all vehicle miles traveled annually in the USA by EVs would take about 1200 terawatt-hours of new electricity. The USA currently generates about 4000 TWH per year. That additional one-third could be done off-peak and not unduly affect the grid, but it would require extending base load capacity into what are currently off-peak hours as well as restricting recharging times to what are currently off-peak hours.

All that for no net gain in GHG emissions. Good for Peak Oil, lousy for Global Warming. Looks like we may have to change our lifestyles after all.

[madokie]

30. What should we be using to power our auto's?

:shrug:
Seriously what do we do, I would like to know

[GliderGuider]

31. To quote Garrett Hardin

He's the author of "The Tragedy of the Commons" as well as the excellent book "Living Within Limits" His conclusion is:

Not every problem has a technical solution.

The answer lies not in powering our cars differently, but in driving less. I've been looking for a general solution to "The Car Problem" for four years now. I'm finally convinced that there isn't one. I've looked at biofuels, electricity, synthetic crude, hydrogen, fuel cells, compressed air, flywheels etc. etc. None of them will work - the problem is simply to big for any general technical solution.

We will have to be satisfied with solutions that rely on regional resource advantages to keep some individual transportation available locally. The only general solutions I've found for transportation are the electrification of fixed route mass transit and conservation.

It sucks, but that's what I've concluded.

[madokie]

32. Mass transit maybe

I'm fixing to go down to my bro's sawmill and its about a 3 gallons of gas trip to and back. I'd gladly give that 6 bucks to ride a bus instead.
personally I hope the technology to solve our energy problems has not be discovered yet. carbon based sucks, nuclear sucks, whats a man to do :shrug: solar and wind but

anyways just thinking and learning here

[phantom power]

33. I think Kunstler (and GG) have the right idea here.

Less driving. More localization. To wit: in the future, we all walk to the corner store, and in general we just buy a lot less stuff.

The motorized traveling that we do indulge in will be mostly mass-transit. Kunstler is a big advocate of reviving railways, which is a clear winner. I personally believe that busses should be a big solution, mostly because what we actually have to work with is a huge network of surface-roads and freeways, not established railways.

That is all assuming that the general chaos caused by the collapse of earth's carrying capacity doesn't just kill about 80% of us, in which case I'm not sure what kind of civilization will survive. Maybe there will only be a certain number of places where motors, electricity, etc, still exist. Or, maybe nowhere. Or some third option that I'll never predict.

[One_Life_To_Give]

34. Innovative old transit

I think a surprising number of people will make innovative uses of old technology. Variations of the electric bicycle with and without modifications to haul additional cargo. Which could be recharged by human powered generators.

The big problem will be food production and distribution. We will end up spending a huge amount of resources trying to solve this problem. We either solve this or write off around 6 Billion people.

[phantom power]

35. I suspect that most bicycles will remain human-powered.

They really are a remarkably efficient machine. Even a person who isn't in super shape can get around reasonably well on one. And you can carry a load of groceries easily enough with a couple baskets. They're also cheap, and cheap to maintain, which I figure will be a big factor in a world where everybody's standard of living is going to be lower.

The food thing worries me a great deal, considering what is happening to snowpacks and glaciers, and watching the trainwreck currently in progress for Australia.