October 18, 2019 • 39 mins
How do electric motors work? Are electric vehicles a new idea? Why aren't there more electric vehicles on the road today? Join Jonathan and Chris as they power through the past, present and possible future of electric vehicles.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios,
How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
How Stuff Works and I heart Radio and I love
all things tech. And today we're looking at a classic
episode of tech Stuff. We're not just looking at it,
(00:24):
we're listening to it too, because it turns out, just
look at an audio file, not much happens. This original
episode published November twenty one, two thousand twelve. It is
titled Tex Stuff Rides in Electric Cars. Bet you can
guess what's about. Let's listen in. Did you know that
one of the more popular ways of getting around in
(00:46):
the earliest days of the horseless carriage was in an
electric vehicle? Yes, but I actually had a course in
college where we studied that, So I'll pretend now, Johnathan,
I had no idea. Well, Chris, you a written man.
I'm going to enlighten you. Now. If only you had
spent some hard earned cash on a on a education,
(01:07):
then you would know that that. Yeah, the electric car
is nothing new in a sense. We've had electric cars
for quite some time. They in fact pre date the
internal combustion engine car. Yeah. They it's funny to look
at the alternative methods for powering a car UH these days,
(01:29):
because in of course electric is one of the more
common ways to talk about it, or hybrids again not new, um,
but this is UH. There are other things too, like
talking about UH ethanol and and plant based fuels, biodiesel shore.
These kinds of things were talked about at the beginning
of the whole car thing when people were saying, you know, well,
(01:52):
what what would be used to power an engine or
or power a motor to make this happen? And they
ran through these things. Eventually Patroley one out. And the
reason this is so challenging now is because the petroleum
UH infrastructure is so well established exactly. But but it's
amazing to to think about because we think, oh, well,
you know, electric cars, well they're new. Well not really.
(02:15):
The problem is the technology UH hasn't been worked on
and and so long, at least by as many people. Right. Yeah,
when you go back to the earliest electric vehicles, they
were very limited. You could not go very far because
the batteries would run out of charge. They were not
necessarily rechargeable. You had massive batteries, so that meant that
(02:38):
added to the overall weight of the vehicle itself. They
didn't go very fast. They seem to be all right
for getting around, uh, like a city uh in the
late nineteenth century, but any difficult terrain that would start
to have problems. Uh. The steam powered cars actually ended
(02:59):
up being more popular than electric ones because they could
go much faster. And uh, they were not necessarily the
best choice either, because they were not terribly efficient. You
had to, you know, get the boiler heated up before
you could go anywhere. You had to actually start generating
steam before you could make the vehicle go, And there's
(03:19):
always the possibility that it could blow up real good,
which not not not something you necessarily want when you're
gonna take a little trip down to Grandma's is to
have the steam boiler explode on the way there. That's
that's generally what we consider a bad things productive transport.
(03:40):
But gas powered cars they had the power and the
versatility that people wanted in those early days of travel.
And because of that, and because we did build this
huge infrastructure to support those sort of cars, there's a
lot of momentum built up right, Yeah, Yeah, to use
a turn them in a way that I wasn't intending,
(04:01):
but they're exactly. They had built up a lot of momentum,
and it meant that any new quote unquote new developments
in uh this technology was going to be met with resistance.
Not necessarily you know, something that people were consciously trying
to resist, but just from the very nature of how
the industry developed. So resistance, Oh man, I am no,
(04:27):
I just can't get away from it, so I'll embrace it.
So the electric car is making kind of a comeback,
depending upon who you ask. Whom you ask, yes, well, yeah,
there it's been in the news a lot, especially during
the election cycle here in America. Yes, um, But do
you want to go back and start talking about some
(04:48):
of these early vehicles first, and we can kind of
talk about where we are now. Sure, if you've got
some information on early vehicles, I'd love to hear it. Okay, Well, Um,
I found a very interesting timeline that that suggested that
it was us oddish inventor Robert Anderson who came up
with a a very very basic electric car with non
rechargeable batteries. That seems like a problem, especially in eighteen
(05:13):
Somewhere in the early eighteen thirties as when he started
working on that, and uh, you know they kept working
on that. Uh. I also have a Gaston Plante, a
French physicist who in eighteen fifty nine had a rechargeable
lead acid battery. Actually, the lead acid battery has been
sort of the staple for electric cars for a while. Um,
(05:34):
but they're extremely heavy, probably because of the lead relate
and just a guess um um, but also a camille
of it doesn't have the accident on it far. Uh.
In eighty one improved upon that idea, and then in
in Des Moines, Iowa, H. William Morrison came up with
(05:56):
an electric car in the United States here um, and
uh you know they were working on those. They even
had a fleet of electric taxis in New York. Yes,
because the first first pedestrian fatality in the Western hemisphere.
As I recall, now you're just being you know, am
(06:16):
I not? Am I not correct? Wasn't there someone who
stepped off a trolley and then was hit by an
electric taxi? Okay, well I don't have that in my notes,
So that's possibly that's possible trivia that may live somewhere
in Jonathan's head. And could have possibly been made up entirely. Well,
let us know, send your email to tech stuff at
Discovery dot com. True enough, the yeah, they had, they
(06:40):
had about sixty of them in New York. Um back
in the about the turn of the twentieth century. And um, yeah, gosh,
that's right. I have to say, I have to specified
turn of the century. Yeah, it just shows that I'm
still not thinking in the twenty century frame of mind. Yes,
but in this case it was a New York state
of mind. Yes, it was so. Yeah. They As a
(07:03):
matter of fact, this had I found a really cool
timeline on NPR, which is National Public Radio here in
the in the United States. Um, that said that at
the turn of the century, twentie century, there were about
four thousand cars on the road and at that point
it was split about thirty three pc each steam, gasoline
(07:24):
and electric cars. Um. Basically they were clean. But um,
cold weather and batteries don't get along. If, yeah, lead
acid battery gets really cold, it's harder to get that
juice flowing. The electrochemical reactions that need to take place
are are slowed down by the cold. That's one of
(07:46):
those things where you know, I've heard people say that
in order to preserve your batteries you should put them
in some place cold, like a freezer refrigerator. Don't do that.
It actually makes it much more difficult for those electrical
electrochemical reactions to take place. So it you might think, oh,
it's it's slowing it down. So therefore the juice will
(08:09):
last longer even when I'm not using it in a
in a UM device, But it's not going to work
very well when you plug it back in. So uh,
the same sort of thing is true in cold weather.
You get in the car and you turn it on,
you just barely creeping along because that electrochemical reaction is
taking place so slowly you're not getting the juice you
(08:30):
need to get get moving now. It's you know, we
we've made some advances since then, so there have been
some more electric cars and we don't necessarily use lead
acid batteries and all of them anymore either. Um No,
but that was that was state of the art and
then not terribly distant past. Um. You know, there are
(08:51):
there are other types of rechargeable batteries, and of course
they do need to be rechargeable. It's very important, of course,
otherwise we would have to have these stations every where
that would have you know, batteries who had to buy
a new battery every time your car was running out
of juice. You know, I'd switch them out and that
would not be very economical, and it would also take
up I mean a ton of space. Yep yep. Now,
(09:13):
of course some you might say, well, what what happened? Uh,
Henry Ford happened? He Boy did he happen? Well? He
and and from what I've read about him, uh, he
was a convert to the idea of using petroleum based cars. Um.
He did like the internal combustion engine, but preferred alternative
(09:34):
fuels to uh, to gasoline. But the thing is, you know,
once then the Model T was released in forty dollars um.
Basically that that you know, it was affordable for so
many people, and his production system made these cars so
(09:56):
easily available. Um that they were you know, they we're
undercutting the prices of electric cars and they were far
more available. So it took off. And uh then like
you know, the infrastructure gets built around it, and then
we're kind of not stuck so much as committed to
a particular type of vehicle. And it takes a lot
(10:18):
of effort to change that. And the reason for the
effort behind changing that is largely through an environmental concern,
but it goes beyond environment too, But we'll cover all
of these things. So you know, if you if you
just think about it from a very basic point of view, uh,
and you're and you're really oversimplifying things, it'd be easy
(10:41):
to say, oh, electric car makes sense because it does
not produce pollution the way a gas powered car does.
It's not emitting uh you know, any sort of uh
gas that could could pollute the environment. You're not worrying
about all the the particles that would come out of exhaust,
(11:03):
all of that sort of stuff, um applies. And so
there is that part of the argument where if you
were to just look at that part of the equation,
it would be very easy to say, ah, well, electric cars,
I mean, that's better for the world, so we should
we should totally switch to that. But you should know,
of course, that nothing is ever that simple to to
(11:24):
take in other considerations. You have to think, well, how
was the electricity generated? The electricity that is charging those
batteries in that electric car, which you know you have
to recharge. Most electric cars have well around forty to
fifty miles of range for a full charge and then up.
You know, you need to have at least that because
(11:46):
otherwise you would you know, look, just on a regular
commute to work, you could end up stranding yourself because
on the drive there and then half to drive back,
you've already gone further than what your car can accomplish
on its own. YEA. Thomas Edison was working on that
problem in he came out with a a nickel steel
battery that would last for about six miles according to
(12:10):
the NPR timeline. Um and uh you know that would
that would make it far more appealing for reasonable commutes.
I mean, uh, back at that time, people were not
driving the distances they do now released here in America.
Um to do different things and uh so, so that
was an improvement. But um, I think another um peg
(12:32):
on the side of the gasoline car was Charles Kettering
who came out with the electric automobile starter. And you know,
so rather than getting out and cranking your car up
with crank in the front to get it started, that
made the gasoline engine easier to start. And when you
had the combination of that and the lower prices of
(12:54):
the gasoline powered cars and the infrastructure. I think that
helped make a serious difference on the in in the
in favor of gasoline power cars, right right, And so
I mean, of course it's a totally different world than
the one we have today where we're looking at the
various uh impact of the gasoline cars out there on
(13:16):
the street. But getting back to the idea of the
environmentally friendly, if your electricity is being produced by coal
uh power power plants, then there's pollution going out into
the environment on behalf of the electricity you're using, so
you're not you know, the car is not as clean
(13:38):
as you would first think necessarily. Now if you're if
your electricity is coming through other means, like you have
a huge solar panel farm attached to your house, and
you might then that's much more clean. I mean, you
still have to consider things like what materials went into
producing both the car and the solar panels, because than
(14:00):
we might get into rare earth minerals. But we did
an entire episode of tech stuff on rare earth minerals,
and I suggest you go back and listen to that
right now, we'll wait. So anyway, now you know I'm
assuming you're all on the honor system that you did listen,
but now you know those rare earth minerals. That's a problem, right,
So that's another thing you have to think about with
(14:21):
this electric versus gas. Beyond that, you have to think
about things like the cost of the batteries, because depending
upon what kind of batteries are in your car there
electric car, they do eventually have to be replaced. They
will eventually run out of enough of the chemicals to
make that electrochemical process happen, and you'll have to change
(14:42):
them out, and they can be really expensive, so I
can add to the price of an electric car. Uh
And and price is another one of those issues, like
if you look at how much does it cost to
drive an electric car versus a gas powered car, and
you have to take into consideration everything like not just
the fuel prices and the electricity prices. I mean, that's
(15:03):
that would be easy to compare because I'm guessing that
in almost every case the cost of electricity is going
to be lower than the cost of gas. So from
that perspective, they're the same. But then you have to
think of things like, all right, well, replacing batteries you've
got to factor that into the cost. You know that's
going to happen, So that drives the electric prices up.
But then you think, well, gas powered cars tend to
(15:25):
require more maintenance because they have more moving parts. They
have fluids that they have to handle, like the gasoline
and things of that nature. So you've got tubes and
pipes and stuff that you don't have an electric cars.
They don't. They don't have those those things. There's the
only fluids you have to worry about, things like break
fluid and uh, when should wiper fluid and of course
(15:46):
headlight fluid. Um. Well, but otherwise, yeah, you know, it's
so what I'm trying to get at is that this
is a really complex issue, and it's really really, really
tricky to do a direct comparison between the two. In general. However,
most the information I see shows that in the long run,
being five years and longer, an electric car properly maintained
(16:12):
versus a gas powered car properly maintained is a better deal.
But it does take a few years for that to
kick in. Yeah, I do feel compelled to point out
that most automobile manufacturers believe that their batteries were outlast
the life of the car. So it is unlikely that
you will have to replace the array of batteries in
(16:33):
a battery powered vehicle. Unlikely. And it also depends on
how long you keep the vehicle too, I mean most people. Uh,
the the lifespan of of cars has been increasing here
in the United States. UM. Where once it was in
the single digits, it's now you know, in the double digits. UM.
But of course you do, as Jonathan said, need to
(16:55):
take care of your vehicle in order for that to happen. UM.
And there's also you know, there's is also a matter
of shipping costs to m because parts for some of
these these things, um have to come from different places
and so um. You know, I know that a few
years ago they were talking about the early hybrid vehicles
(17:17):
and people were buying them because they used less gasoline
because they were you know, like a mixture of of
battery power and gas power. But they said, well, you know,
the thing is the parts come from so many different
places that it takes fossil fuels to you know, to
be burned, to get those parts to one place to
have them assembled and then take them to the place
(17:38):
where you buy the vehicle and some of the uh,
the green hue that you're either partly or completely battery
powered vehicle has is sort of tinged by um, the
offset of the oka. Yes, it gets an oily tin
(18:00):
was I was waiting. I was just waiting because I
was like, I was staring at Chris, thinking where's this going?
But I get it. I get it. It's yeah, it's
definitely a complex issue. And and on top of that,
you know, you might say, well, the the cost of
an electric vehicle often right now as we're recording this
(18:22):
podcast anyway, tends to be more expensive than a comparable
vehicle that is gas powered. It's been improving, right, and
it's one of those things like any technology, where the
earlier versions tend to be more expensive, and as we
improve our manufacturing techniques and and everything around that, then
the prices can come down. On top of that, we
have to remember the political side of this, where in
(18:44):
the United States, there are especially within particular states we're
talking about both federal and state level here. UM, there
are incentives in many places to purchase an electric car
where you can get tax credits or rebates and helps
bring the overall price of the vehicle down closer to
within the range of other cars in that class. Hey, guys,
(19:08):
Jonathan from two thousand nineteen, I'm here to pump the
brakes a little bit on this classic episode for us
to take a quick break. A lot of complex issues here.
Some of them are economics, some of them are environmental,
some of them are political. And that's why it's really
(19:30):
been kind of a hot button issue. I mean, particularly
that political part with the the tax credits. I've seen
I've seen praise for that where where people have said,
because of this, you have put electric vehicles within the
grasp of more more folks than otherwise would have that
opportunity because otherwise it would be too expensive for them
to buy. On the flip side, there are people saying,
(19:53):
this is our tax money. You're giving credits to other
people with my money. Uh. I think that's a very personally,
this is my opinion. I think that's a fairly short
sighted view saying that my money is going to give
someone else a break when you're thinking, okay. Ultimately, the
idea here is that we're trying to get ourselves off
(20:15):
a dependence on oil and gasoline as much as we
possibly can, and in that sense, it is a benefit
to me even if I never go out and buy
an electric car, to help reduce that dependency on oil,
particularly when you get into global politics where you have
to worry about who is it that owns the oil
(20:35):
that we are getting, and what is our political relationship
with them, what's our political relationship with the country surrounding
that one, what's that country's political relationship. It gets so thorny.
So in my in my view, the in the long
term game, uh, this incentive to go out and get
(20:57):
electric car could be of great bennet fit to everyone.
But again you have to be able to take that
long term look and just uh suppressed that that initial
urge to say this isn't fair because my money is
going to help someone else and I don't see, like
I'm not buying an electric car, so I don't see
why I have to pay this this tax money. Yeah. Yeah,
(21:18):
And now, of course, um, whether or not you agree
with it, it's it's easy to at least understand that point.
I mean, not all not all politics are understandable, but
it's understandable to say, hey, you know, I'm I'm I'm
paying taxes. I want to see something for my money.
And well, the thing the easy argument for that is
we'll go buy an electric car, dude. UM. But no,
(21:40):
that that's that's oversimplifying the argument that the thing is
because they're so expensive, they're not affordable for everyone. UM.
Perhaps somebody particularly likes their car. There. Car enthusiasts are
very passionate about certain vehicles. UM. And you know, for
a long time we've had gas powered vehicles that people
have fallen in love with, so you know, they're they're
(22:02):
going to be people who still love that UM, which
in my personal opinion is understandable. But I also would
like to uh see electric car succeed because I do
think there are um, you know, better for the environment
in the long haul, uh, at least in the immediate sense. Now,
there's a lot as we were talking about, this isn't
something that's going to happen overnight. There's a lot of
(22:25):
work that has to be done. One company that I
think UM is interesting to to follow is a company
called Better Place, which is UM I believe, uh an
Israeli company, and they have been working with organizations all
over the world to test out there uh their systems. Now,
why are Magazine had an article about them and UM
(22:47):
their founder I don't know if I'm pronouncing his his
first name writer not shy Agassi UM and UH. Basically
they have their Their website is very informative about the
different kinds of technologies that they are looking at. But
they're working on ways to convert uh more typical cars
rather than building them from scratch to UH to electricity
(23:09):
and and uh basically creating the infrastructure that would be
necessary to power these vehicles. UM, which I mean no
pun intended power UM. But yeah, I mean it's some
it's I think that you know, if you poke around
on the website they have, at least they give you
an idea of what it's the kind of work it's
going to take. And it's not going to be UM.
(23:32):
I don't think it's going to be one company or
one person or one country around the world. It's going
to take many people in many countries, you know, working
on the problem to generate a real solution to it.
Because you know, frankly, if you look at the timeline
on NPR there there, it goes from the downfall of
the electric car in basically all the things we were
(23:53):
talking about before to and that's because people just weren't
working on the problem them in between. I mean they were,
but they were It was more of a I wouldn't
say hobby. It was something where they were testing ideas.
More so than we're going to build a fleet of
electric cars. We're gonna take it back from these, uh,
these gasoline powered ideas. We're gonna we're gonna completely revamp that.
(24:18):
And it goes from six when UH, General Motors came
out with the e V one UM, which it sold
at Saturn dealerships. I remember because I have a Saturn
and I saw one every once in a while. You
joined the cult. I did join the cult. We also
had a Saturn, So I can't I can't criticize UM,
which is now an orphan car UM. But there have
(24:39):
been others, of course, you know recently, UM that are
all electric. Tesla, Oh yeah, Tesla's famous and in fact,
Automobile Magazine named the Tesla Model s as its two
thousand Car of the Year. Keeping in mind we're still
in twelve and car years make no sense to me,
but no, they named the Tesla Model s uh the
(25:02):
car of the year and said that it was, um
uh a very impressive ride. A very quiet, very fast car,
and they and apparently we're all endangering their driver's licenses
by driving far too fast. And it well, the Tesla
Roadster um which was its first which is a sports car,
(25:23):
was its first car out there. Um I understand, has
a whiplash inducing acceleration. Yeah, it's it's one of those
things where just it's an incredibly fast acceleration, like just
the it's it's a really powerful vehicle. And we should
also say that according to the Energy Collective, there's been
(25:44):
a two increase in sales of electric vehicles from eleven.
But if you want to know that what that is
in real numbers, you know, you're two percent more. That
sounds incredible when you get down to real numbers, that's
around thirty thousand cars. So that's about the same number
of cars in an entire year that some of the
(26:05):
more popular models sell in a month. So you know,
you've got to take keep your perspective on there. So, yes,
the the industry is growing, which is good, but it's
still very tiny in comparison to the traditional gasoline powered
cars and even to hybrid vehicles, which have had they've
they've had a few more years to uh to really
(26:25):
start hitting the market, at least in the United States. UM,
and I want to talk really briefly, just explain very
quickly the what makes electric cars work. Because we talked
about how in the gas engine you have all these
tubes and pipes and stuff. You've got you're using combustion
to help drive pistons, UM you know, expanding gases, all
this kind of stuff. That's that's what's providing the the
(26:48):
energy you need to make the cargo. But with an
electric car, you're talking about batteries, a controller, and electric motor.
And the electric motor is what's generating all the UH
energy to make the cargo. And the basics of an
an electric motor are pretty simple, and that comes down
to UH two magnets. How do they work? We actually
(27:11):
have an article on it if you want to know.
But all right, so imagine that you have this is
a very super simple electric motor. Let's say that you
have you have a magnet and it's uh in sort
of a semicircle UH shape, and you've got a north
end of the magnet on one side and the south
(27:32):
end of the magnet on the other side. Okay, so
it's think of it like an arc. So you've got
the south end on one side of the arc, in
the north end on the other side of the arc.
In between, like mounted on a on a pole, you
have a rotor that can spin freely around in a circle.
And then you have mounted on that rotor an electro magnet. Now,
(27:56):
when you run a current through that electromagnet, it creates
a magnetic field, and uh it magnetizes this electromagnet. So
you have a north pole in the south pole. Now,
when the north pole and the of the electromagnet and
the north pole of that permanent magnet that's mounted in
an arc are close to one another, they repel each
other and Santa Claus flies off. And then when the
(28:17):
north pole of the electromagnet gets close to the south
pole of the permanent magnet, they attract one another, so
which disturb all the penguins. If you just have the
current run I'm ignoring Christopher when you when you if
you just have the current running through one direction in
this electro magnet, it's going to align itself so that
the north pole of the electromagnet is pointing at the
(28:37):
south pole of the permanent magnet and and the south
pole of the electromagnets point where the north pole of
the permanent magnet. But then if you were to reverse
the current, that would also reverse the polarity of the
magnet itself. The electromagnet, the poles would switch, which would
mean that now suddenly it would be pushing away from
(28:58):
the the permanent magnet UH as it is currently um aligned,
So it would move and rotate so that the polls
were again attracted to the opposites. So by switching the
current the direction of current inside the electro magnet at
a particular rate, you can get that rotor to turn.
(29:18):
And as the rotor turns, which I think was a
soap opera, it starts it's doing work. Now you've started,
you can harness that work to generate electricity. That's the
basis of the electric motor. So you're using magnets to
turn a rotor. By the way, that we usually refer
to that as a a brushed motor, and the reason
(29:40):
for that is there there are contacts on the inside
of that rotor UH that when the magnet is spinning around,
it's what's allowing the the current to change direction. Because
you're you're getting power from batteries. Batteries are direct current,
that's e CE, so direct current is always going to
(30:03):
flow in the same direction. Alternating current is electricity that
is reversing the flow of current rapidly in cycles pulses UM.
So in order to convert DC to a C, which
is what we really need for things like an electric car,
you would have these um these little they are called
(30:25):
brushes uh inside the electric motor that once they hit
certain contacts, that's what would allow the flow of electricity
to change direction. Uh. There are also brushless electric motors.
In this case, what you do is you put the
permanent magnets on the rotor, so the rotor magnets are
never going to change, and you put the electro magnets
(30:46):
on the field around the rotor, and you just change
the the direction of current in the permanent magnets. They're stationary,
so you don't have to worry about figuring out how
you're gonna swap the flow of current over and over
with a move being object, and the rotor itself will
still spin and generate energy that way. Electricity Jonathan from
(31:07):
two thousand nineteen. Again, we're going to take a quick
break to thank our sponsor. Now you know, some some
battery you're charging is accomplished in gasoline power cars through
the alternator. Um, and uh, you know, they're there're other
(31:28):
regenerative breaking and some other things that help out with that,
but of course it's much more of an issue with
electric cars, um. You know. And then and the distance
the it's hard to say. It's weird for me to
say mileage because I always think, you know, miles per
gallon UM. And also kilometers to people in this is
an honest question. Kilometers, kilometer ridge, what do you call
(31:52):
it in Europe? Anyway? Distance distance? Um, yeah, the distance
you could travel. Let's just say that is and how
it's being silly, but I really don't know. Um, the
distance you can travel with an electric car is still
one of the big issues. It's still a reason why
people are hesitant to adopt the vehicles, although they're they're
more likely to these days. Um. But some people have
(32:14):
tried to get around that with sort of combinations that
uh seem you know, like they might be more challenging
than others. Chevrolet here in the United States has the Vault,
which is primarily an electric car, but it does have
a gasoline powered engine in it that can take up
It's sort of like the reverse of a Toyota Prius,
(32:36):
where you use your your gasoline engine to get from
like you say, on the highway, and then as you're
driving in the city where it stopped and go, it
converts over to electricity. UM. The volt is supposed to
work primarily on electricity, and when the battery runs down
and you still need to get somewhere, the gasoline engine
can help you get the rest of the way better place.
(32:59):
Um And visions a world in which the batteries are
not attached to their vehicle itself, so you could pull
into a battery battery replacement station and somebody will pull
the battery for you, put in a freshly charged one,
hook it up, and you're ready to go. Um in
addition to charging stations, and again that's expensive because that's
infrastructure that's more than just the car. You've got to
(33:21):
have the stations available to do that. But I have
to say that is a pretty practical way of looking
at it. Yeah, we've also talked about fuel cells in
the past that are not two different or a hydrogen
based car and same sort of same sort of challenges.
Applied to that where you're talking about, Yeah, the hydrogen
powered car sounds like a great idea. You get heat
and some water vapor, which granted is technically a greenhouse gas,
(33:44):
but it's not it's not a pollutant in in the
way that carbon dioxide is. But you know, you've you've
got UH. You know that's your your your output and
you're using it. Sounds like a hydrogen based fleet of
cars will be a great idea, But then you have
to figure out how to support the fleet of cars,
and that's where we start running into problems where you
(34:07):
you're looking at a multiple multibillion dollar problem with most countries,
including places like the United States, which are it's a
big country with lots of people in it. Of course,
there are larger countries with even more people in it,
and for them would be you know, a significant challenge
to switch over. Electric cars are not maybe not quite
(34:30):
as dramatic a a shift in the sense that with
the right adapters, you would be able to plug your
car in UH into any UH outlet that was capable
of putting out the right amount of power, so you
wouldn't necessarily have to have refueling stations designed specifically for
(34:51):
electric cars, except when you're talking about going on a
really long trip. If you're doing a road trip of
any length, then you're thinking, well, I I definite the
need to figure out something to supplement the distance this
car can go, because otherwise I'm never going to get
to where I'm headed, right, But you know, they've they've
made some pretty strong strides in that as well. Tesla
(35:15):
reports that it can with its vehicles hit two fifty
miles on a single charge, which is pretty impressive. Yeah, yeah,
But there are other challenges to UM actually some that
are very recent UM and no jokes please if you
know something about Fisker, but just just as of the
time we're recording this, it's very early November. UM. Hurricane
(35:37):
Sandy just hit the northeastern part of the United States
and went into Canada, UM and caused quite a bit
of damage up there. And I found this kind of interesting,
UM because I found a story about Fisker in which
sixteen UM Fisker Karmas, which are expensive electric vehicles UM,
were submerged by saltwater from the storms urge of Hurricane Sandy,
(36:02):
and the saltwater affected the cars and they caught fire. Yes,
there are a hundred thousand dollars apiece, so it's very
bad karma. Um. But basically they were there, apparently stationed
in Port Newark, New Jersey, and when the storm came in,
the storm surge you know, caused the tides to swell,
(36:24):
they got doused in saltwater, and apparently when they got flooded,
the systems in the car reacted to the saltwater poorly,
to say the very least, and the car's caught fire. Um.
Now they've been accused of the reason I had said this,
if you're not familiar with them, they have been accused
of fires before. But I think in general this could
(36:45):
be a hazard. Um, if you live in a storm
prone area, this might be something that you have to
worry about. You might say, well, I have to evacuate,
not because I think the storm is gonna be bad,
but they will be flooding and if it's flooding enough
for my car will be largely submerged. Um. You know
people have that problem now with with combustion engines. When
a gasoline powered car, if the water gets to a
(37:07):
certain depth, you know your gasoline power car won't work.
Diesel might sort of depending. Yeah, so there are a
lot of things to think about. I mean, I think
I think for the general approach your the move towards
electric cars is I think more positive than not positive.
(37:27):
I think it could happen, the thing as my will
to podcast. No, I think it could happen. I think,
but it's gonna take work and people need to realize that. Yeah,
it's it's going to be more expensive at first, but
you know, in the long run, the technology will improve,
the infrastructure will improve, and and in the long run
it might be uh, we all might be better off
(37:48):
for it. I hope you guys enjoyed that classic episode
of text Stuff. It's always great to listen to Chris
chat away about anything really, And if you guys have
any suggestions for future episodes for the show, you can
email me. The address is tech Stuff at how stuff
works dot com, or pop on over to our website
(38:09):
that's tech Stuff podcast dot com. You're gonna find an
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(38:29):
from text Stuff that will make you super duper cool.
And on top of that, it goes to help the
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you again really soon. Text Stuff is a production of
i Heeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from
my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
(38:52):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios,
How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
How Stuff Works and I heart Radio and I love
all things tech. And today we're looking at a classic
episode of tech Stuff. We're not just looking at it,
(00:24):
we're listening to it too, because it turns out, just
look at an audio file, not much happens. This original
episode published November twenty one, two thousand twelve. It is
titled Tex Stuff Rides in Electric Cars. Bet you can
guess what's about. Let's listen in. Did you know that
one of the more popular ways of getting around in
(00:46):
the earliest days of the horseless carriage was in an
electric vehicle? Yes, but I actually had a course in
college where we studied that, So I'll pretend now, Johnathan,
I had no idea. Well, Chris, you a written man.
I'm going to enlighten you. Now. If only you had
spent some hard earned cash on a on a education,
(01:07):
then you would know that that. Yeah, the electric car
is nothing new in a sense. We've had electric cars
for quite some time. They in fact pre date the
internal combustion engine car. Yeah. They it's funny to look
at the alternative methods for powering a car UH these days,
(01:29):
because in of course electric is one of the more
common ways to talk about it, or hybrids again not new, um,
but this is UH. There are other things too, like
talking about UH ethanol and and plant based fuels, biodiesel shore.
These kinds of things were talked about at the beginning
of the whole car thing when people were saying, you know, well,
(01:52):
what what would be used to power an engine or
or power a motor to make this happen? And they
ran through these things. Eventually Patroley one out. And the
reason this is so challenging now is because the petroleum
UH infrastructure is so well established exactly. But but it's
amazing to to think about because we think, oh, well,
you know, electric cars, well they're new. Well not really.
(02:15):
The problem is the technology UH hasn't been worked on
and and so long, at least by as many people. Right. Yeah,
when you go back to the earliest electric vehicles, they
were very limited. You could not go very far because
the batteries would run out of charge. They were not
necessarily rechargeable. You had massive batteries, so that meant that
(02:38):
added to the overall weight of the vehicle itself. They
didn't go very fast. They seem to be all right
for getting around, uh, like a city uh in the
late nineteenth century, but any difficult terrain that would start
to have problems. Uh. The steam powered cars actually ended
(02:59):
up being more popular than electric ones because they could
go much faster. And uh, they were not necessarily the
best choice either, because they were not terribly efficient. You
had to, you know, get the boiler heated up before
you could go anywhere. You had to actually start generating
steam before you could make the vehicle go, And there's
(03:19):
always the possibility that it could blow up real good,
which not not not something you necessarily want when you're
gonna take a little trip down to Grandma's is to
have the steam boiler explode on the way there. That's
that's generally what we consider a bad things productive transport.
(03:40):
But gas powered cars they had the power and the
versatility that people wanted in those early days of travel.
And because of that, and because we did build this
huge infrastructure to support those sort of cars, there's a
lot of momentum built up right, Yeah, Yeah, to use
a turn them in a way that I wasn't intending,
(04:01):
but they're exactly. They had built up a lot of momentum,
and it meant that any new quote unquote new developments
in uh this technology was going to be met with resistance.
Not necessarily you know, something that people were consciously trying
to resist, but just from the very nature of how
the industry developed. So resistance, Oh man, I am no,
(04:27):
I just can't get away from it, so I'll embrace it.
So the electric car is making kind of a comeback,
depending upon who you ask. Whom you ask, yes, well, yeah,
there it's been in the news a lot, especially during
the election cycle here in America. Yes, um, But do
you want to go back and start talking about some
(04:48):
of these early vehicles first, and we can kind of
talk about where we are now. Sure, if you've got
some information on early vehicles, I'd love to hear it. Okay, Well, Um,
I found a very interesting timeline that that suggested that
it was us oddish inventor Robert Anderson who came up
with a a very very basic electric car with non
rechargeable batteries. That seems like a problem, especially in eighteen
(05:13):
Somewhere in the early eighteen thirties as when he started
working on that, and uh, you know they kept working
on that. Uh. I also have a Gaston Plante, a
French physicist who in eighteen fifty nine had a rechargeable
lead acid battery. Actually, the lead acid battery has been
sort of the staple for electric cars for a while. Um,
(05:34):
but they're extremely heavy, probably because of the lead relate
and just a guess um um, but also a camille
of it doesn't have the accident on it far. Uh.
In eighty one improved upon that idea, and then in
in Des Moines, Iowa, H. William Morrison came up with
(05:56):
an electric car in the United States here um, and
uh you know they were working on those. They even
had a fleet of electric taxis in New York. Yes,
because the first first pedestrian fatality in the Western hemisphere.
As I recall, now you're just being you know, am
(06:16):
I not? Am I not correct? Wasn't there someone who
stepped off a trolley and then was hit by an
electric taxi? Okay, well I don't have that in my notes,
So that's possibly that's possible trivia that may live somewhere
in Jonathan's head. And could have possibly been made up entirely. Well,
let us know, send your email to tech stuff at
Discovery dot com. True enough, the yeah, they had, they
(06:40):
had about sixty of them in New York. Um back
in the about the turn of the twentieth century. And um, yeah, gosh,
that's right. I have to say, I have to specified
turn of the century. Yeah, it just shows that I'm
still not thinking in the twenty century frame of mind. Yes,
but in this case it was a New York state
of mind. Yes, it was so. Yeah. They As a
(07:03):
matter of fact, this had I found a really cool
timeline on NPR, which is National Public Radio here in
the in the United States. Um, that said that at
the turn of the century, twentie century, there were about
four thousand cars on the road and at that point
it was split about thirty three pc each steam, gasoline
(07:24):
and electric cars. Um. Basically they were clean. But um,
cold weather and batteries don't get along. If, yeah, lead
acid battery gets really cold, it's harder to get that
juice flowing. The electrochemical reactions that need to take place
are are slowed down by the cold. That's one of
(07:46):
those things where you know, I've heard people say that
in order to preserve your batteries you should put them
in some place cold, like a freezer refrigerator. Don't do that.
It actually makes it much more difficult for those electrical
electrochemical reactions to take place. So it you might think, oh,
it's it's slowing it down. So therefore the juice will
(08:09):
last longer even when I'm not using it in a
in a UM device, But it's not going to work
very well when you plug it back in. So uh,
the same sort of thing is true in cold weather.
You get in the car and you turn it on,
you just barely creeping along because that electrochemical reaction is
taking place so slowly you're not getting the juice you
(08:30):
need to get get moving now. It's you know, we
we've made some advances since then, so there have been
some more electric cars and we don't necessarily use lead
acid batteries and all of them anymore either. Um No,
but that was that was state of the art and
then not terribly distant past. Um. You know, there are
(08:51):
there are other types of rechargeable batteries, and of course
they do need to be rechargeable. It's very important, of course,
otherwise we would have to have these stations every where
that would have you know, batteries who had to buy
a new battery every time your car was running out
of juice. You know, I'd switch them out and that
would not be very economical, and it would also take
up I mean a ton of space. Yep yep. Now,
(09:13):
of course some you might say, well, what what happened? Uh,
Henry Ford happened? He Boy did he happen? Well? He
and and from what I've read about him, uh, he
was a convert to the idea of using petroleum based cars. Um.
He did like the internal combustion engine, but preferred alternative
(09:34):
fuels to uh, to gasoline. But the thing is, you know,
once then the Model T was released in forty dollars um.
Basically that that you know, it was affordable for so
many people, and his production system made these cars so
(09:56):
easily available. Um that they were you know, they we're
undercutting the prices of electric cars and they were far
more available. So it took off. And uh then like
you know, the infrastructure gets built around it, and then
we're kind of not stuck so much as committed to
a particular type of vehicle. And it takes a lot
(10:18):
of effort to change that. And the reason for the
effort behind changing that is largely through an environmental concern,
but it goes beyond environment too, But we'll cover all
of these things. So you know, if you if you
just think about it from a very basic point of view, uh,
and you're and you're really oversimplifying things, it'd be easy
(10:41):
to say, oh, electric car makes sense because it does
not produce pollution the way a gas powered car does.
It's not emitting uh you know, any sort of uh
gas that could could pollute the environment. You're not worrying
about all the the particles that would come out of exhaust,
(11:03):
all of that sort of stuff, um applies. And so
there is that part of the argument where if you
were to just look at that part of the equation,
it would be very easy to say, ah, well, electric cars,
I mean, that's better for the world, so we should
we should totally switch to that. But you should know,
of course, that nothing is ever that simple to to
(11:24):
take in other considerations. You have to think, well, how
was the electricity generated? The electricity that is charging those
batteries in that electric car, which you know you have
to recharge. Most electric cars have well around forty to
fifty miles of range for a full charge and then up.
You know, you need to have at least that because
(11:46):
otherwise you would you know, look, just on a regular
commute to work, you could end up stranding yourself because
on the drive there and then half to drive back,
you've already gone further than what your car can accomplish
on its own. YEA. Thomas Edison was working on that
problem in he came out with a a nickel steel
battery that would last for about six miles according to
(12:10):
the NPR timeline. Um and uh you know that would
that would make it far more appealing for reasonable commutes.
I mean, uh, back at that time, people were not
driving the distances they do now released here in America.
Um to do different things and uh so, so that
was an improvement. But um, I think another um peg
(12:32):
on the side of the gasoline car was Charles Kettering
who came out with the electric automobile starter. And you know,
so rather than getting out and cranking your car up
with crank in the front to get it started, that
made the gasoline engine easier to start. And when you
had the combination of that and the lower prices of
(12:54):
the gasoline powered cars and the infrastructure. I think that
helped make a serious difference on the in in the
in favor of gasoline power cars, right right, And so
I mean, of course it's a totally different world than
the one we have today where we're looking at the
various uh impact of the gasoline cars out there on
(13:16):
the street. But getting back to the idea of the
environmentally friendly, if your electricity is being produced by coal
uh power power plants, then there's pollution going out into
the environment on behalf of the electricity you're using, so
you're not you know, the car is not as clean
(13:38):
as you would first think necessarily. Now if you're if
your electricity is coming through other means, like you have
a huge solar panel farm attached to your house, and
you might then that's much more clean. I mean, you
still have to consider things like what materials went into
producing both the car and the solar panels, because than
(14:00):
we might get into rare earth minerals. But we did
an entire episode of tech stuff on rare earth minerals,
and I suggest you go back and listen to that
right now, we'll wait. So anyway, now you know I'm
assuming you're all on the honor system that you did listen,
but now you know those rare earth minerals. That's a problem, right,
So that's another thing you have to think about with
(14:21):
this electric versus gas. Beyond that, you have to think
about things like the cost of the batteries, because depending
upon what kind of batteries are in your car there
electric car, they do eventually have to be replaced. They
will eventually run out of enough of the chemicals to
make that electrochemical process happen, and you'll have to change
(14:42):
them out, and they can be really expensive, so I
can add to the price of an electric car. Uh
And and price is another one of those issues, like
if you look at how much does it cost to
drive an electric car versus a gas powered car, and
you have to take into consideration everything like not just
the fuel prices and the electricity prices. I mean, that's
(15:03):
that would be easy to compare because I'm guessing that
in almost every case the cost of electricity is going
to be lower than the cost of gas. So from
that perspective, they're the same. But then you have to
think of things like, all right, well, replacing batteries you've
got to factor that into the cost. You know that's
going to happen, So that drives the electric prices up.
But then you think, well, gas powered cars tend to
(15:25):
require more maintenance because they have more moving parts. They
have fluids that they have to handle, like the gasoline
and things of that nature. So you've got tubes and
pipes and stuff that you don't have an electric cars.
They don't. They don't have those those things. There's the
only fluids you have to worry about, things like break
fluid and uh, when should wiper fluid and of course
(15:46):
headlight fluid. Um. Well, but otherwise, yeah, you know, it's
so what I'm trying to get at is that this
is a really complex issue, and it's really really, really
tricky to do a direct comparison between the two. In general. However,
most the information I see shows that in the long run,
being five years and longer, an electric car properly maintained
(16:12):
versus a gas powered car properly maintained is a better deal.
But it does take a few years for that to
kick in. Yeah, I do feel compelled to point out
that most automobile manufacturers believe that their batteries were outlast
the life of the car. So it is unlikely that
you will have to replace the array of batteries in
(16:33):
a battery powered vehicle. Unlikely. And it also depends on
how long you keep the vehicle too, I mean most people. Uh,
the the lifespan of of cars has been increasing here
in the United States. UM. Where once it was in
the single digits, it's now you know, in the double digits. UM.
But of course you do, as Jonathan said, need to
(16:55):
take care of your vehicle in order for that to happen. UM.
And there's also you know, there's is also a matter
of shipping costs to m because parts for some of
these these things, um have to come from different places
and so um. You know, I know that a few
years ago they were talking about the early hybrid vehicles
(17:17):
and people were buying them because they used less gasoline
because they were you know, like a mixture of of
battery power and gas power. But they said, well, you know,
the thing is the parts come from so many different
places that it takes fossil fuels to you know, to
be burned, to get those parts to one place to
have them assembled and then take them to the place
(17:38):
where you buy the vehicle and some of the uh,
the green hue that you're either partly or completely battery
powered vehicle has is sort of tinged by um, the
offset of the oka. Yes, it gets an oily tin
(18:00):
was I was waiting. I was just waiting because I
was like, I was staring at Chris, thinking where's this going?
But I get it. I get it. It's yeah, it's
definitely a complex issue. And and on top of that,
you know, you might say, well, the the cost of
an electric vehicle often right now as we're recording this
(18:22):
podcast anyway, tends to be more expensive than a comparable
vehicle that is gas powered. It's been improving, right, and
it's one of those things like any technology, where the
earlier versions tend to be more expensive, and as we
improve our manufacturing techniques and and everything around that, then
the prices can come down. On top of that, we
have to remember the political side of this, where in
(18:44):
the United States, there are especially within particular states we're
talking about both federal and state level here. UM, there
are incentives in many places to purchase an electric car
where you can get tax credits or rebates and helps
bring the overall price of the vehicle down closer to
within the range of other cars in that class. Hey, guys,
(19:08):
Jonathan from two thousand nineteen, I'm here to pump the
brakes a little bit on this classic episode for us
to take a quick break. A lot of complex issues here.
Some of them are economics, some of them are environmental,
some of them are political. And that's why it's really
(19:30):
been kind of a hot button issue. I mean, particularly
that political part with the the tax credits. I've seen
I've seen praise for that where where people have said,
because of this, you have put electric vehicles within the
grasp of more more folks than otherwise would have that
opportunity because otherwise it would be too expensive for them
to buy. On the flip side, there are people saying,
(19:53):
this is our tax money. You're giving credits to other
people with my money. Uh. I think that's a very personally,
this is my opinion. I think that's a fairly short
sighted view saying that my money is going to give
someone else a break when you're thinking, okay. Ultimately, the
idea here is that we're trying to get ourselves off
(20:15):
a dependence on oil and gasoline as much as we
possibly can, and in that sense, it is a benefit
to me even if I never go out and buy
an electric car, to help reduce that dependency on oil,
particularly when you get into global politics where you have
to worry about who is it that owns the oil
(20:35):
that we are getting, and what is our political relationship
with them, what's our political relationship with the country surrounding
that one, what's that country's political relationship. It gets so thorny.
So in my in my view, the in the long
term game, uh, this incentive to go out and get
(20:57):
electric car could be of great bennet fit to everyone.
But again you have to be able to take that
long term look and just uh suppressed that that initial
urge to say this isn't fair because my money is
going to help someone else and I don't see, like
I'm not buying an electric car, so I don't see
why I have to pay this this tax money. Yeah. Yeah,
(21:18):
And now, of course, um, whether or not you agree
with it, it's it's easy to at least understand that point.
I mean, not all not all politics are understandable, but
it's understandable to say, hey, you know, I'm I'm I'm
paying taxes. I want to see something for my money.
And well, the thing the easy argument for that is
we'll go buy an electric car, dude. UM. But no,
(21:40):
that that's that's oversimplifying the argument that the thing is
because they're so expensive, they're not affordable for everyone. UM.
Perhaps somebody particularly likes their car. There. Car enthusiasts are
very passionate about certain vehicles. UM. And you know, for
a long time we've had gas powered vehicles that people
have fallen in love with, so you know, they're they're
(22:02):
going to be people who still love that UM, which
in my personal opinion is understandable. But I also would
like to uh see electric car succeed because I do
think there are um, you know, better for the environment
in the long haul, uh, at least in the immediate sense. Now,
there's a lot as we were talking about, this isn't
something that's going to happen overnight. There's a lot of
(22:25):
work that has to be done. One company that I
think UM is interesting to to follow is a company
called Better Place, which is UM I believe, uh an
Israeli company, and they have been working with organizations all
over the world to test out there uh their systems. Now,
why are Magazine had an article about them and UM
(22:47):
their founder I don't know if I'm pronouncing his his
first name writer not shy Agassi UM and UH. Basically
they have their Their website is very informative about the
different kinds of technologies that they are looking at. But
they're working on ways to convert uh more typical cars
rather than building them from scratch to UH to electricity
(23:09):
and and uh basically creating the infrastructure that would be
necessary to power these vehicles. UM, which I mean no
pun intended power UM. But yeah, I mean it's some
it's I think that you know, if you poke around
on the website they have, at least they give you
an idea of what it's the kind of work it's
going to take. And it's not going to be UM.
(23:32):
I don't think it's going to be one company or
one person or one country around the world. It's going
to take many people in many countries, you know, working
on the problem to generate a real solution to it.
Because you know, frankly, if you look at the timeline
on NPR there there, it goes from the downfall of
the electric car in basically all the things we were
(23:53):
talking about before to and that's because people just weren't
working on the problem them in between. I mean they were,
but they were It was more of a I wouldn't
say hobby. It was something where they were testing ideas.
More so than we're going to build a fleet of
electric cars. We're gonna take it back from these, uh,
these gasoline powered ideas. We're gonna we're gonna completely revamp that.
(24:18):
And it goes from six when UH, General Motors came
out with the e V one UM, which it sold
at Saturn dealerships. I remember because I have a Saturn
and I saw one every once in a while. You
joined the cult. I did join the cult. We also
had a Saturn, So I can't I can't criticize UM,
which is now an orphan car UM. But there have
(24:39):
been others, of course, you know recently, UM that are
all electric. Tesla, Oh yeah, Tesla's famous and in fact,
Automobile Magazine named the Tesla Model s as its two
thousand Car of the Year. Keeping in mind we're still
in twelve and car years make no sense to me,
but no, they named the Tesla Model s uh the
(25:02):
car of the year and said that it was, um
uh a very impressive ride. A very quiet, very fast car,
and they and apparently we're all endangering their driver's licenses
by driving far too fast. And it well, the Tesla
Roadster um which was its first which is a sports car,
(25:23):
was its first car out there. Um I understand, has
a whiplash inducing acceleration. Yeah, it's it's one of those
things where just it's an incredibly fast acceleration, like just
the it's it's a really powerful vehicle. And we should
also say that according to the Energy Collective, there's been
(25:44):
a two increase in sales of electric vehicles from eleven.
But if you want to know that what that is
in real numbers, you know, you're two percent more. That
sounds incredible when you get down to real numbers, that's
around thirty thousand cars. So that's about the same number
of cars in an entire year that some of the
(26:05):
more popular models sell in a month. So you know,
you've got to take keep your perspective on there. So, yes,
the the industry is growing, which is good, but it's
still very tiny in comparison to the traditional gasoline powered
cars and even to hybrid vehicles, which have had they've
they've had a few more years to uh to really
(26:25):
start hitting the market, at least in the United States. UM,
and I want to talk really briefly, just explain very
quickly the what makes electric cars work. Because we talked
about how in the gas engine you have all these
tubes and pipes and stuff. You've got you're using combustion
to help drive pistons, UM you know, expanding gases, all
this kind of stuff. That's that's what's providing the the
(26:48):
energy you need to make the cargo. But with an
electric car, you're talking about batteries, a controller, and electric motor.
And the electric motor is what's generating all the UH
energy to make the cargo. And the basics of an
an electric motor are pretty simple, and that comes down
to UH two magnets. How do they work? We actually
(27:11):
have an article on it if you want to know.
But all right, so imagine that you have this is
a very super simple electric motor. Let's say that you
have you have a magnet and it's uh in sort
of a semicircle UH shape, and you've got a north
end of the magnet on one side and the south
(27:32):
end of the magnet on the other side. Okay, so
it's think of it like an arc. So you've got
the south end on one side of the arc, in
the north end on the other side of the arc.
In between, like mounted on a on a pole, you
have a rotor that can spin freely around in a circle.
And then you have mounted on that rotor an electro magnet. Now,
(27:56):
when you run a current through that electromagnet, it creates
a magnetic field, and uh it magnetizes this electromagnet. So
you have a north pole in the south pole. Now,
when the north pole and the of the electromagnet and
the north pole of that permanent magnet that's mounted in
an arc are close to one another, they repel each
other and Santa Claus flies off. And then when the
(28:17):
north pole of the electromagnet gets close to the south
pole of the permanent magnet, they attract one another, so
which disturb all the penguins. If you just have the
current run I'm ignoring Christopher when you when you if
you just have the current running through one direction in
this electro magnet, it's going to align itself so that
the north pole of the electromagnet is pointing at the
(28:37):
south pole of the permanent magnet and and the south
pole of the electromagnets point where the north pole of
the permanent magnet. But then if you were to reverse
the current, that would also reverse the polarity of the
magnet itself. The electromagnet, the poles would switch, which would
mean that now suddenly it would be pushing away from
(28:58):
the the permanent magnet UH as it is currently um aligned,
So it would move and rotate so that the polls
were again attracted to the opposites. So by switching the
current the direction of current inside the electro magnet at
a particular rate, you can get that rotor to turn.
(29:18):
And as the rotor turns, which I think was a
soap opera, it starts it's doing work. Now you've started,
you can harness that work to generate electricity. That's the
basis of the electric motor. So you're using magnets to
turn a rotor. By the way, that we usually refer
to that as a a brushed motor, and the reason
(29:40):
for that is there there are contacts on the inside
of that rotor UH that when the magnet is spinning around,
it's what's allowing the the current to change direction. Because
you're you're getting power from batteries. Batteries are direct current,
that's e CE, so direct current is always going to
(30:03):
flow in the same direction. Alternating current is electricity that
is reversing the flow of current rapidly in cycles pulses UM.
So in order to convert DC to a C, which
is what we really need for things like an electric car,
you would have these um these little they are called
(30:25):
brushes uh inside the electric motor that once they hit
certain contacts, that's what would allow the flow of electricity
to change direction. Uh. There are also brushless electric motors.
In this case, what you do is you put the
permanent magnets on the rotor, so the rotor magnets are
never going to change, and you put the electro magnets
(30:46):
on the field around the rotor, and you just change
the the direction of current in the permanent magnets. They're stationary,
so you don't have to worry about figuring out how
you're gonna swap the flow of current over and over
with a move being object, and the rotor itself will
still spin and generate energy that way. Electricity Jonathan from
(31:07):
two thousand nineteen. Again, we're going to take a quick
break to thank our sponsor. Now you know, some some
battery you're charging is accomplished in gasoline power cars through
the alternator. Um, and uh, you know, they're there're other
(31:28):
regenerative breaking and some other things that help out with that,
but of course it's much more of an issue with
electric cars, um. You know. And then and the distance
the it's hard to say. It's weird for me to
say mileage because I always think, you know, miles per
gallon UM. And also kilometers to people in this is
an honest question. Kilometers, kilometer ridge, what do you call
(31:52):
it in Europe? Anyway? Distance distance? Um, yeah, the distance
you could travel. Let's just say that is and how
it's being silly, but I really don't know. Um, the
distance you can travel with an electric car is still
one of the big issues. It's still a reason why
people are hesitant to adopt the vehicles, although they're they're
more likely to these days. Um. But some people have
(32:14):
tried to get around that with sort of combinations that
uh seem you know, like they might be more challenging
than others. Chevrolet here in the United States has the Vault,
which is primarily an electric car, but it does have
a gasoline powered engine in it that can take up
It's sort of like the reverse of a Toyota Prius,
(32:36):
where you use your your gasoline engine to get from
like you say, on the highway, and then as you're
driving in the city where it stopped and go, it
converts over to electricity. UM. The volt is supposed to
work primarily on electricity, and when the battery runs down
and you still need to get somewhere, the gasoline engine
can help you get the rest of the way better place.
(32:59):
Um And visions a world in which the batteries are
not attached to their vehicle itself, so you could pull
into a battery battery replacement station and somebody will pull
the battery for you, put in a freshly charged one,
hook it up, and you're ready to go. Um in
addition to charging stations, and again that's expensive because that's
infrastructure that's more than just the car. You've got to
(33:21):
have the stations available to do that. But I have
to say that is a pretty practical way of looking
at it. Yeah, we've also talked about fuel cells in
the past that are not two different or a hydrogen
based car and same sort of same sort of challenges.
Applied to that where you're talking about, Yeah, the hydrogen
powered car sounds like a great idea. You get heat
and some water vapor, which granted is technically a greenhouse gas,
(33:44):
but it's not it's not a pollutant in in the
way that carbon dioxide is. But you know, you've you've
got UH. You know that's your your your output and
you're using it. Sounds like a hydrogen based fleet of
cars will be a great idea, But then you have
to figure out how to support the fleet of cars,
and that's where we start running into problems where you
(34:07):
you're looking at a multiple multibillion dollar problem with most countries,
including places like the United States, which are it's a
big country with lots of people in it. Of course,
there are larger countries with even more people in it,
and for them would be you know, a significant challenge
to switch over. Electric cars are not maybe not quite
(34:30):
as dramatic a a shift in the sense that with
the right adapters, you would be able to plug your
car in UH into any UH outlet that was capable
of putting out the right amount of power, so you
wouldn't necessarily have to have refueling stations designed specifically for
(34:51):
electric cars, except when you're talking about going on a
really long trip. If you're doing a road trip of
any length, then you're thinking, well, I I definite the
need to figure out something to supplement the distance this
car can go, because otherwise I'm never going to get
to where I'm headed, right, But you know, they've they've
made some pretty strong strides in that as well. Tesla
(35:15):
reports that it can with its vehicles hit two fifty
miles on a single charge, which is pretty impressive. Yeah, yeah,
But there are other challenges to UM actually some that
are very recent UM and no jokes please if you
know something about Fisker, but just just as of the
time we're recording this, it's very early November. UM. Hurricane
(35:37):
Sandy just hit the northeastern part of the United States
and went into Canada, UM and caused quite a bit
of damage up there. And I found this kind of interesting,
UM because I found a story about Fisker in which
sixteen UM Fisker Karmas, which are expensive electric vehicles UM,
were submerged by saltwater from the storms urge of Hurricane Sandy,
(36:02):
and the saltwater affected the cars and they caught fire. Yes,
there are a hundred thousand dollars apiece, so it's very
bad karma. Um. But basically they were there, apparently stationed
in Port Newark, New Jersey, and when the storm came in,
the storm surge you know, caused the tides to swell,
(36:24):
they got doused in saltwater, and apparently when they got flooded,
the systems in the car reacted to the saltwater poorly,
to say the very least, and the car's caught fire. Um.
Now they've been accused of the reason I had said this,
if you're not familiar with them, they have been accused
of fires before. But I think in general this could
(36:45):
be a hazard. Um, if you live in a storm
prone area, this might be something that you have to
worry about. You might say, well, I have to evacuate,
not because I think the storm is gonna be bad,
but they will be flooding and if it's flooding enough
for my car will be largely submerged. Um. You know
people have that problem now with with combustion engines. When
a gasoline powered car, if the water gets to a
(37:07):
certain depth, you know your gasoline power car won't work.
Diesel might sort of depending. Yeah, so there are a
lot of things to think about. I mean, I think
I think for the general approach your the move towards
electric cars is I think more positive than not positive.
(37:27):
I think it could happen, the thing as my will
to podcast. No, I think it could happen. I think,
but it's gonna take work and people need to realize that. Yeah,
it's it's going to be more expensive at first, but
you know, in the long run, the technology will improve,
the infrastructure will improve, and and in the long run
it might be uh, we all might be better off
(37:48):
for it. I hope you guys enjoyed that classic episode
of text Stuff. It's always great to listen to Chris
chat away about anything really, And if you guys have
any suggestions for future episodes for the show, you can
email me. The address is tech Stuff at how stuff
works dot com, or pop on over to our website
(38:09):
that's tech Stuff podcast dot com. You're gonna find an
archive of every single episode ever published ever since we
started this eleven years ago. You will also find links
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link to our online store where you can purchase merchandise
(38:29):
from text Stuff that will make you super duper cool.
And on top of that, it goes to help the
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you again really soon. Text Stuff is a production of
i Heeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from
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(38:52):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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