[Closed] Is this for real it sounds like a world changer

I remember the hypercar they did in 2014, and which everyone poo-pooed. The fact that they're still around is promising, but the fact that we know exactly nothing more about their flow cell batteries than we did two years ago isn't.

I remember the hypercar they did in 2014, and which everyone poo-pooed.

or something like that 🙂

It will be really expensive

I think this is the key blocker to widespread electric car use. If whatever car I wanted was available for same price as an electric then I would buy one.

The range is the second blocker and a car that can do 60 miles really is no use to a lot of people. Make it 200 mikes and it would be more viable.

So an electric car for same price as petrol model that can do 200 miles on a charge, where do I get one?

Price is certainly a consideration when buying any car but range is unique to electrics and currently it's crap.

200 miles for normal car price? Tesla. 50k for a luxury large car for the p60 is exactly the same as equivalent audi,bmw or merc. Plus its faster.

The small tesla promises the same but at 35k. So same as a nice a3.

Give it 3 or 4 years and i think all the mainstream car manufacturers will have a full electric car at normal ish prices.

The small tesla promises the same but at 35k. So same as a nice a3.

£35k 😯 you can get a very nice A3 for a lot less.

The Quantino in the link above did 1100km in an endurance run apparently, no problems with range there.
The water is in two 159 litre tanks. That will take some engineering to allow for a 300kg weight difference between a full and empty car I'd imagine...

It's a big step forward, they're becoming more practical but it's not there yet I don't think it'll be too long though.

I've just ran a quote for the most basic Tesla on work lease £712 per month that's a lot more than my last A3 cost. 😆

The energy still has to be put into the fuel somehow. So no real reduction in pollution over the lifetime of the car.

I really want to want one and for the bulk of my car driving it would have the range without issue. But it's the extra 10% of longer journeys that worries and would prevent at the moment. My work colleague's father has a Nissan Leaf. Every week he's sneaking into the work car park to pinch his daughter's petrol powered car. It makes for amusing father/daughter arguments for the rest of us and as a concept a pool long range car within a family could work but they would clearly have to plan better than this family does!

Hmm, cynical physicist is cynical.

It's basically an interchangeable-electrolyte battery. Similar ones have been proposed for large storage batteries, you have two large tanks of your electrolytes and pump them through a cell. It's a way of making a large capacity battery without having to make a large cell.

But AFAIK the basic problem is the inefficiency - they can't be as efficient as a packaged cell. But maybe there's been a breakthrough. With technology NASA gave up on because they couldn't make it work.

Also, the chief technology guy describes himself as a physicist, autodidact, musician, pilot and racing driver - which sounds a lot like he could add bullshit artist to the list 😀

question is.. can they sort out all the problems with alternative means of power/fuel before we run out of fossil fuels.
How many years of fossil fuel have we left, presuming we continue to diminish at the current rate?

Wouldn't you need to live by the sea to own one?

Engineering gimmick that could just be a decent test bed for further engineering breakthroughs.

That will take some engineering to allow for a 300kg weight difference between a full and empty car I'd imagine...

Really?

Do you sometimes carry passengers and luggage in your car?

tjagain - Member
The energy still has to be put into the fuel somehow. So no real reduction in pollution over the lifetime of the car.

I don't know if the answer is yes or no, and we know you're very anti car but are you saying the entire energy creation, consumption and output will cause the same pollution as drilling for oil, shipping it, refining it, shipping it to a petrol station, burning it in a car and the resultant exhaust gases?

As a very simple illustration, you could get the energy for an electric car from a windfarm plus no emissions from the car. Much less pollution than a petrol or diesel car.

As for the car in the article it's certainly being Pitched as clean though obviously unproven

[quote=gobuchul ]That will take some engineering to allow for a 300kg weight difference between a full and empty car I'd imagine...
Really?
Do you sometimes carry passengers and luggage in your car?

Do you sometimes carry passengers and luggage plus 300KG of fuel?

What this proves is that the technology is out there. If there was a real desire from industry to push this technology, we'd have been driving around in cheap, reliable alternative fuel cars years ago. As it is, industry still sees it's best interests served by maintaining the reliance on fossil fuels.

kerley - Member

"It will be really expensive"

I think this is the key blocker to widespread electric car use. If whatever car I wanted was available for same price as an electric then I would buy one.

remember that the purchase price can be offset against the fuel price...

(1000miles/month = 100+ litres of petrol = £110)

our next car might well be a leased electric...

jekkyl - Member

question is.. can they sort out all the problems with alternative means of power/fuel before we run out of fossil fuels.
How many years of fossil fuel have we left, presuming we continue to diminish at the current rate?

****ing hundreds.

seriously, the real problem with fossil fuels is that there's too much...

remember that the purchase price can be offset against the fuel price...

(1000miles/month = 100+ litres of petrol = £110)

Electricity isn't free though It's cheaper though but price of electric cars outways that.

question is.. can they sort out all the problems with alternative means of power/fuel before we run out of fossil fuels.
How many years of fossil fuel have we left, presuming we continue to diminish at the current rate?

Then, Sheikh Yamani, a Harvard-educated law graduate, went on elaborating what he really meant: "Thirty years from now there will be a huge amount of oil - and no buyers. Oil will be left in the ground,” said Sheik Yamani before going poetic to take Mr Brandreth, who by then may have been shell-shocked by the revelation, to the metaphorical zenith of his blunt prophesy: “The Stone Age came to an end, not because we had a lack of stones, and the oil age will come to an end not because we have a lack of oil."

http://www.asiantribune.com/node/87610

This was quite an interesting read about electric cars and their development.

http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/06/how-tesla-will-change-your-life.html

If I had the need and the money for a nice car, I'd be going for a Tesla over and above Audi & BMW etc. As it is, I'll stick with my van for the time being instead!

If there was a real desire from industry to push this technology, we'd have been driving around in cheap, reliable alternative fuel cars years ago.

I don't believe this for a minute, fuel cells have seen a lot of R&D work over the years and simply aren't there yet.

as a concept a pool long range car within a family could work but they would clearly have to plan better than this family does!

I did think this could work for us as a lot of the trips are short local, commuting journeys. So petrol/diesel car (or rather van) for the big trips and a little electric run about for the local trips. This falls down when for instance at half term I'm off to Wales (do they even have electric?) and the missus is taking the kids to her parents (170+ miles). 200 mile minimum range is needed. And that is a real world range, with reserve (travelling with young kids), during winter and on 5 yr old batteries, not fresh ones on a test track in ideal conditions. If they are anything like mobile phone batteries after 12 months you'd be lucky to get to the shops and back.

Electricity isn't free though It's cheaper though but price of electric cars outways that.

Electricity is only cheaper as the government rake in plenty of cash through fuel (petrol/diesel) taxation. If the consumption of such heavily taxed fuels drops they will lump the taxation on the electricity, and that will no doubt hit everyone's overall electric consumption.

I'm all for clean energy and hope this isn't BS. But I'm not for the Car Planet lifestyle. Make it work for new and improved mass (and small scale) transit systems/improved public transport (w/bike racks too) and angle for less cars on roads not more. We are silly people, really we are.

what he ^ said.

Anyone who uses the term "water dust" when explaining how something works deserves to be treated with scepticism.

Having said that, if it works and can be programmed to make a noise like a 1980s vintage Alfa Romeo V6 then I'm in.

I was just about to say this....

PJM1974 - Member

Anyone who uses the term "water dust" when explaining how something works deserves to be treated with scepticism.

From the article: " [i]The liquid is vapourised and released, harmlessly, we’re told, as ‘water dust’.[/i]"

TBH, if it was real, and viable the major manufacturers would be all over it like a rash. Cos this.....[quote="mikey74"]As it is, industry still sees it's best interests served by maintaining the reliance on fossil fuels.Is the sort of thing a paid up tin foil hat wearing oddball would say.

I would guess that there is some sort of horrific, but as of yet undisclosed issue with the tech, like the membrane needs replacing every few hundred hours of use at horrific cost. Or 1 gram of contaminants in the liquid cause horrifc damage to the membrane and the "water dust" to burst into flames when in contact with the atmosphere. Or the "water dust" (who comes up with this shit) is highly corrosive and/or carcinogenic. Or completely made up of PM10s. Or the liquid actually requires massive energy to purify then treat to enable it to hold the charge.

Or something.

There usually is.

The guy behind that company is massively dodgy, a known charlatan.

The weight distribution of the vehicle will change as the fluid is moved from one tank to another.

He's been teasing the limo version for years, not a lot has happened in terms of actual technological evaluation however.

Don't hold your breath for the vehicle as promised, is what I mean.

(The advert for the Quant limo on YT is very cool, but that's kinda the issue)

Anyone who uses the term "water dust" when explaining how something works deserves to be treated with scepticism.

It's dehydrated water, obviously.

Though I don't understand why it is producing steam anyway - it's not a thermal reaction. The suggestion that it's vapourising the water to make space in the tank for fresh electrolyte doesn't make sense - why not just have it drip on the road? and doesn't it use a lot of energy to evaporate that much water? Much more energy than you'd get from the battery cell?

Also, from the Top Gear article:

There’s more. And it gets even weirder. What makes the Quentin particularly interesting is it’s the world’s first low-voltage electric car. Every other EV uses high voltage, so low voltage means thick, heavy, pricey cables. But the Quantino’s are no thicker than a human finger.

Low voltage is usually used for low-speed stuff like golf karts and mobility scooters, but because the nanoFlowcell system produces high current at low-rated voltage, la Vecchia says he can get away with much smaller wires without the resultant losses and heat build-up.

Confused, I rang Top Gear’s Big-Brain-In-Chief Chief Paul Horrell, who checked his equations and replied with the extremely valid point that a combination of high current and thin wires with no resultant heat build-up defies the laws of physics. Presented with this, uh, overwhelming evidence, la Vecchia smiled and said his patents will reveal a breakthrough in due course.

So he's invented room temperature superconductors as well. Hmm.

I'm smelling a kickstarter scam in progress.

Victor Muller is probably involved somewhere along the line.

Is the sort of thing a paid up tin foil hat wearing oddball would say.

That doesn't apply to me, so clearly not. Do you, then, disagree that our industrial and political decision making is in the favour of maintaining the fossil fuel status quo?

There's no conspiracy, it's down to maintaining profitability: R&D into such things requires a huge input of money and resources (of course, so does searching for oil, but there are already frameworks and systems in place for that), and until such new technologies can be made to be as profitable, then there'll be little, large-scale industrial interest in pursuing it.

Surely vaporising any liquid which contains a dissolved solid will mean either a buildup of solid material in the tank or the release of saline infused vapour into the air if it's not condensed and retained?

Yup. And why not just have a second tank to collect it, which would mean not having 300kg weight changes.

There's no conspiracy, it's down to maintaining profitability: R&D into such things requires a huge input of money and resources

1.42 tons, 136bhp, 0-60 in how many seconds?

1.42 tons, 136bhp, 0-60 in how many seconds?

I spotted that. I drive a 1.6 tonne 130 hp car. I don't see 0 to 60 in under about 10 seconds

300kg is alot of mass. I assume the whole road work will be fill of tankers going to fuel depots

But trying to be positive

Hopefully they have invented a cheap high energy density battery

Unlikely but better still they have invented a technology that really does in some way extract energy from sea water. Although I really can't see how. Surely sea water is a soup of ions already in there lowest energy state?

I assume the whole road work will be fill of tankers going to fuel depots

Which is why most (all?) major manufacturers are spending billions on development of alternative energy sources for their cars. And funding huge reasearch programs to give them a head start on the next two or three generations of alternative energy sources.
If you're going to make sweeping statements like that, at least keep abreast of what's actually going on.

I'm quite aware of what's going on. Electric vehicles have been around since the 1800s and yet we've all be driving around in fossil-fuelled vehicles for last 100 years; mainly due to the discovery of huge oil reserves. As a result, alternative-fuel vehicles were sidelined.

It's only now, due to scientific and public pressure that the motor industry is reverting back to alternative fuels.

The water is in two 159 litre tanks. That will take some engineering to allow for a 300kg weight difference between a full and empty car I'd imagine...

It'll take a canny bit of engineering to fit 300 litres of the stuff into a car too!

I'd assume you move salt water around in pipes. Much like water.

An entire new National pipe network. No challenge there...

As a result, alternative-fuel vehicles were sidelined.