Day Brown wrote in a message to Roy J. Telleson:
                                           ^
(That's supposed to be an "a")
 RJ> What I have to wonder about this stuff,  though, is the   
 RJ> economics of it.  It's all well and good to show that it's  
 RJ> *possible* to build a motor with a lot of power that's very 
 RJ> efficient and light in weight,  but how much does it cost?   
 RJ> When they can start showing that costs are going to be 
 RJ> comparable to what's out there now,  *then* we'll see things 
 RJ> start to change.
 RJ> Another consideration,  and one that I don't often see addressed with  
 RJ> regard to electric vehicles,  is the power grid.  I can't 
 RJ> remember where it was exactly,  but somewhere in my collection 
 RJ> of Analog magazines there's an article that looked at that 
 RJ> issue and came to the conclusion that in order to move to 
 RJ> electric vehicles in this country we'd need to *double* the 
 RJ> power grid,  in order to support current levels of usage.  
 DB> From the homepower standpoint Roy, I'd be interested in vehicle 
 DB> that I could power with wind/solar/water or wood that I can 
 DB> have available from my own place.
This is a good point.  About the best I can think of with regard to this at 
this point in time would be one that worked off steam,  with provision for 
alternate fuels being built into it.  Seems to me I've heard mention of such 
a power plant somewhere,  though I can't recall just where it was at the 
moment.
 DB> Certainly, the grid has to be considered.  Some analyses 
 DB> suggest that the pollution problems can be handled at a central 
 DB> powerplant far more effectively than in each individual 
 DB> vehicle. I dunno.
That does seem to be the consensus of opinion to a large extent,  though 
perhaps it's changing.  If you consider the sort of nightmare of vacuum hoses 
and gizmos and gadgets and "stuff" that gets hung on to an older engine to 
try and improve emissions,  perhaps that's the case.  If,  on the other hand, 
 you hang a few sensors on an engine and then have a computer monitoring a 
bunch of what's going on it could get a lot simpler and a lot more reliable.  
I'm looking into this a bit.
 DB> Among other developments is a new technology *in production 
 DB> now* of a photovoltaic panel made of amorphous silicon doped 
 DB> with the techniques of computer chip plasma deposition, which 
 DB> if the pilot plant proves out, will *dramatically* cut the cost 
 DB> of panels.
That sounds real good to me!  I'd love to see the prices of that stuff come 
down significantly.
 DB> The standard PV panels convert 2-3% of sunlight, the new panels 
 DB> can do 12%. My experience suggest that a 4X8 foot panel would 
 DB> do 600 watts, a typical 20X40 foot house roof would get you 
 DB> around 15kw. hmmm.  maybe 90 kwh/day if the sun shines.
That sure sounds like a worthwhile investment.
 DB> 90kwh=70hp hours- it would get most folks to work and back.  I 
 DB> spoze I'd need panels on the garage to power the house.
Hmm.  Do let us know if you hear more on this,  I imagine that if production 
could ramp up a bit these would eventually become commodity items,  which 
means that we'd start seeing the same sort of price drops that we see with 
computer stuff.  
email: roy.j.tellason%tanstaaf@frackit.com 
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