Nautique announces 100% electric SAN 230

[DanielC]

Late in the 1990's or early in the 2000's, PCM did some experiments with the Ford Modular V8 engines. At the time they were testing the 4.6 L, and the 5.4 L engines, some with superchargers.

Long story short, they are great engines for cars, and even trucks, but not so much for boats.

So now our only option for engines is GM V-8 engines.

I am not so sure that the Ecoboost engine would be durable enough in a marine environment. There is also a possibility that PCM could be working on it, or testing it, right now.

I do not have any inside information, this is just a W A G. (Wild ____ Guess)

[AirTool]

I know an immediate way to lower the price of gasoline by approximately 50 cents per gallon.

I'll give you a hint, the total amount to be lowered will vary from state to state.

[MARK-S]

This is just another way to make the greenies feel good about themselves. What they dont get is the fact that when you plug into charge it, thats more coal added to the fire or more nuke waste to add more power to the grid. Burn gas or burn coal, it all adds carbon. Added to the price is also recycle charges for the highly toxic batteries that are sure to make their way to our landfills when people see the charge from the recycle centers. By the time refinements are made to the idea, there will be other sources of clean energy to burn engins on. Its a waste of time and money and it probably adds to the overall cost of a gas powered CC so they can recoup cash to pay for the R&D.

[srock]

How about being able to make a run on one of those lakes that don't allow gas engines...they expect to see a paddle boat, sail boat or row boat with a trolling motor and here you come!

[swc5150]

Exactly, then the ordinance will instantly be changed to include size and weight restrictions. For those who think "hey, now I can have my Nautique in our community trolling lake!" will be sadly mistaken.

Ditto to what MS said too!

[SkiTundra]

The electricity to drive a Nissan Leaf 100 miles costs about 1/10 as much as the petrol to drive a similar size petrol car the same distance. Why is this? Partially because it is much cheaper (and better environmentally) to produce an equivalent bit of hp (@ the road) with large generating plants than with a small petrol engine. Small engines (anything under about 2,000 hp) directly driving wheels are extremely inefficient. Small engines driving a generator which in turn drives motors which drive wheels (electro-motive or 100% hybrid) are better, but still not nearly as efficient nor as environmentally sound as a large generation plant.

While a petrol car is limited to only petrol as a fuel source, electrical generation can use a variety of sources from coal to natural gas to uranium. Many Leaf and Tesla owners actually derive 100% of their charging from solar panels (More for fun though since the current cost of the panels makes payback about 8-12 years) and I know one who gets over 50% of his from his wind generator.

From a purely cheapass perspective, reducing my annual fuel costs by 90% is appealing. Potential savings in other maintenance not unwelcome either.

Environmentally however the production and disposal of batteries is an issue.

[DanielC]

This is a solar panel I picked off the home depot web site:
Grape Solar 280-Watt Polcrystalline Solar panel. $599.00

The electric wakeboard boat has a 78,000 KWH battery. So, with a little simple math, it would only take 278.5 hours of daylight for this $600 solar panel to charge the battery for your electric 230 Nautique. Lets assume you get 12 hours of good sunlight, a day on the panel. That means you can use the boat about every 23 days.

Yes, I know gasoline engines are horribly inefficient in converting the total chemical energy in a gallon of gas to useful work, but the amount of total energy in gasoline is so huge, we can afford the losses.

Could you please cite your source on any Leaf or Tesla car owner charging their car from solar cells? And it indeed they are, how much subsidy did we all pay in taxes to support this?

Remember this one fact when talking about electric motors compared to internal combustion engines. 746 watts = one horsepower.

[scott resick]

I say dig the d$#n Keystone pipline and keep buying gas!! I cant imagine the rumble of that V8 being replaced by a hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
The trees seem to love the carbon...

[azeus17]

I feel the current electric vehicles are very cost ineffective. Some of them tout "up to 40 miles" on one charge. I bet its less, which is nothing, and the very sporadic charging stations still cost money to use. Not until they can make an electric car that will go easily over 100 miles, and have free charging stations all over, will the electric car craze even begin to catch on, and then it will still be very slow. Even the hybrids are not all that great.
I have a 1998 VW TDI diesel I bought for 4K a few years ago that routinely and w/o effort, gets 40 plus mpg. That is the way to go. IMO

Well, we can thank our wonderful government for diesel not making a comeback. Your 1998 TDI probably does not have $10,000 worth of government mandated after treatment systems now required on diesel engines making the diesel option far to expensive for any "Economy" car...I know that Chevy Volt (not that the Volt is an economy car, but to make the point) engineers were looking into placing a very small displacement diesel in the car purely as a generator to extend the range. After treatment regulations killed that.

Not sure, but I can not imagine the regulations would be any different for boats.

[gride]

Tesla would do best designing the batteries and drivetrain IMO. For not too much more than a Prius you get a real electric performance car. I don't want backwards engineered leaf equipment? Leno's entire mammoth garage is wind and solar powered. On a different note. Hydrogen seems more viable.

[SkiTundra]

Daniel, I think if you look on the mynissanleaf forum there are 2 or 3 folks on there charging their Leafs primarily w/ Solar. The teslamotors forum has a couple as well. They're not using panels from Home Depot, but systems a bit more robust that can provide enough of a charge in 12 hours or so for their daily commutes. I think most of these systems run above about $6k or so, thus the several year payback.

Raw watts to horsepower calcs are meaningless. You have to account for too vast of an array of inefficiencies in petrol powered vehicles and electric powered vehicles to get any meaningful comparison. Much easier to simply look at current technology and how much petrol vs how much kwh is required to go some distance with similar vehicles and what the cost of each is. If an electric system is not far more fuel efficient (at the powerplant be it a vehicle's engine or mamothpowerco), why is an electric powered car so vastly less expensive to run?

Mark made the comment that using an electric boat means more coal or whatever. Correct. But silly argument, so does a petrol powered boat. The difference is that doing 15 runs with a petrol boat might consume 5 gallons of petrol while doing the same w/ an electric might only add about 1/2 gallon more to the petrol powered mamothelectrico power plant. And my guess is that mamothelectrico generates a lot less pollution per gallon than any small engine.

[DanielC]

I am not the one making the assertion that people are charging their electric car entirely with solar. Again, accurately cite your source.

Please note, even if you have "signed up" for the more expensive green power option of generating electricity that may be available form your electric company, you get the electricity generated from exactly the same sources as everybody else buying power from your power company, because there is only one set of wires feeding power to your house. You are even prevented from switching power companies, because electric companies have a monopoly on areas, so you only have one set of company wires in any given area.

Horsepower to watts calculations are meaningful. Theoretically, at a steady state, it takes an electric motor consuming 746 watts to generate one horsepower of work. A one horsepower gas engine can generate 746 watts of electricity. A watt is one way of measuring power. So is horsepower. You can say is not so, but it is still a simple fact. I understand the power delivery is different. An electric motor can deliver max torque at a stall, a gas engine needs to maintain RPM to deliver torque. I even realise in many applications, like air compressors, a gasoline engine has to have a higher horsepower than an electric motor delivering the same amount of compressed air. This is mainly because the electric motor can apply max torque at a stall, to get the compressor turning, but once the compressor is turning, that advantage is gone.

Yes, I will give you that to do the same amount of work with an electric motor, as compared to a gas engine the costs of the gas engine will be higher. Even if you could tax both energy sources at the same rate, electric would still have the advantage.

However, using electric motors requires either a cord, or a battery. Here is what I wrote at the beginning of this thread about the run time of the electric SAN 230:
"The battery has a capacity of 78 kW Hours
746 Watts = one horsepower. Divide 78,000 by 746, and this is the result.
The battery has a capability to put out 104.56 horsepower for an hour, or 52.27 horsepower for two hours, or about 26 horsepower for four hours.
A single 20 amp 120 volt circuit can put out 2400 watts. It would take that power supply 32.5 hours to recharge the battery, assuming 100% efficiency. Of course, you could wire the boat house for 240 volt, and 50 amp, and get the charge time to a theoretical 6.5 hours."

How long will the boat run on a full charge? I really do not know. Correct Craft has not made that known, yet. But based on the capacity of the battery, I know how long it would take it to charge it again, based on 100% efficiency.

The biggest issue with these arguments is this. People simply do not realise how much energy is available from burning a gallon of gas. My Ford Aerostar van can get over 20 miles to a gallon of gas, at highway speeds. Expressed on a smaller scale, a cup (8 OZ) of gasoline can push my Aerostar over a mile. At highway speeds. Show me a battery the size of a coffee cup that can do that.


Lets talk about generating the power for a bit.
Coal, many people are working to shut that down. Too dirty. It creates CO2, a political football, depending on who you believe.
I really do not see nuclear as a option after what happened in Japan last year.
Natural gas, not as dirty as coal, but still emits CO2.
Hydroelectric, the current trend is to remove dams, not build them.
Solar can only generate power in the daytime.
Wind can only generate power when the wind blows.

Electricity, on a large scale cannot be stored. It has to be generated when it is used. Here is another problem with electricity. it cannot be transmitted more than several hundred miles. The electric transmission grid is basically at capacity. In fact here in the Pacific Northwest, the Bonneville Power Administration, had to choose between generating power with hydroelectric dams, or using power from wind farms, due to the high water run off last spring. They had already shut down fuel burning power plants. They had to run water through the dam's turbines, because dumping too much water over the spillway increases dissolved gases in the water, and that hurts endangered species of Salmon. So the BPA had to refuse power from wind farms, untl later into summer.

Absolutely we need a different source of power, rather than relying on petroleum imported from people who really do not like us. Yes, we need to build the Keystone XL pipeline.

Yes, an electric boat is an option. But due to the limitations of batteries, I see the electric boat option as being much more practical in a Slalom application, where the boat is at most about 1,000 feet from the boat house, with a second. or third battery on a charger.

Close to where I live, we have a ferry for a river crossing, the Canby ferry. It is electric. It runs on an extension cord, well, overhead wires with a trolley that follow the ferry back and forth across the river.

Want to read about a pretty fast electric car, check this out.
http://www.plasmaboyracing.com/whitezombie.php

[swc5150]

Electric boats are not nearly ready for viable, real-world application, and therefore will be sales bottom feeders. Great marketing plan: here's a boat that runs 1/5 as long before a timely recharge, and costs 50% more than the gas counterpart to purchase. Being in marketing, these boats make no sense to me. While I applaud the effort to come up with an alternative propulsion system, I feel these efforts are falling short. Boats are water vehicles, so why not pursue hydrogen options? I'm afraid the e Nautique will serve no other purpose than to make the owner feel good about being "green", while sitting on the dock waiting for that battery to charge.

[SkiTundra]

I am not the one making the assertion that people are charging their electric car entirely with solar. Again, accurately cite your source.

I don't understand why this is such a big issue for you. Numerous people are doing it. When I get time I'll see if I can find some of their posts.

Please note, even if you have "signed up" for the more expensive green power option of generating electricity that may be available form your electric company, you get the electricity generated from exactly the same sources as everybody else buying power from your power company, because there is only one set of wires feeding power to your house. You are even prevented from switching power companies, because electric companies have a monopoly on areas, so you only have one set of company wires in any given area.

First, I have a choice of two power companies today and it will soon be three when Great River Energy gets their consumer unit up later this year. That's beside the point however, what diff does is make if I get my power from the same place as my neighbor?

Horsepower to watts calculations are meaningful. Theoretically, at a steady state,...

Yes, theoretically they are meaningful. Real world though is quite different due to inefficiencies of various systems. A thimble of petrol has a lot of energy. Unfortunately the engine in your boat turns a rather huge chunk in to heat, wastes a bit during idle, and spits a gob out the exhaust. Of the energy in a gallon of crude oil, how much actually makes it to your prop? Or, even just how much of the energy in a gallon of petrol that you put in your tank makes it to your prop? Electricity has the same issue of dissipating energy as heat, even along a xmission line, but overall I think it is much less from origination (crude, natural gas, coal) to prop than petrol is crude to prop.

What difference does the size of a battery or cup of petrol make? A battery is a tank. The petrol tank in your boat or car doesn't shrink as you burn through fuel does it?

Yes, charging w/ a 120v/20a circuit would take a while. I have a Level II charger (240v/30a) in my garage that fully charges a Leaf in 7 hrs. DC quick chargers will do the job in about 90 minutes. We don't know how long the boat will go on a full charge, but if it will generally pull for a day then charging overnight with a Level II should be fine. There may be occasional days where it doesn't have enough for a final run, but then saving a chunk on fuel costs may be worth it to some. If it can go for a half day and it's worth it to you (and it won't be to most people), but in a DC quick charge.

Lets talk about generating the power for a bit.
Coal, many people are working to shut that down. Too dirty. It creates CO2, a political football, depending on who you believe.
I really do not see nuclear as a option after what happened in Japan last year.
Natural gas, not as dirty as coal, but still emits CO2.
Hydroelectric, the current trend is to remove dams, not build them.
Solar can only generate power in the daytime.
Wind can only generate power when the wind blows.

The question on all of these is how do they compare to a small internal combustion engine in a car or boat? I think they are all considerably more efficient at turning raw fuel in to final output (eg Crude > Prop, Coal > Driven wheels, etc.), create far less pollution per Kj or Kw of final output, and cost less. If a coal plant powers a bunch of electric cars and you have an equivalent bunch of petrol cars, the petrol cars will, I think, use considerably more raw material (petrol), create considerably more pollution than the coal plant, and will cost more.

More later...

[SkiTundra]

Want to read about a pretty fast electric car, check this out.
http://www.plasmaboyracing.com/whitezombie.php

Fun stuff, thanks for the link.