back to article Japan claims latest long distance e-car record

A Japanese e-car has set a new world record for the longest distance travelled on a single charge, travelling the 345 miles from Tokyo to Osaka without pulling over to re-charge. japan_ecar_record_01 Tateuchi drove his modified Mira from Tokyo to Osaka The distance trumps the 313 miles managed by a Tesla Roadster through a …

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  1. Bob 18

    13 hours, really?

    Of course, you can travel from Tokyo to Osaka in just 3 hours by (electric) train.

  2. Kent Brockman

    Yes, but whats the average speed??

    assuming the 26 minutes were the comfort stops, 345 miles over 13 hours gives just over 26mph... is that the same as the tesla??

    If not, how can you compare?

  3. Richard 31

    average speed.

    At an average speed of 25mph, this seems a bit pointless.

    My test would have a 5 minute charge time, about the time it takes to fill a normal car and then

    how far will if go when you are doing proper motorway speeds with aircon?

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    How slow?

    An average of about 23mph? Do the same test at 65-70mph and then I'll be impressed.

  5. MJI Silver badge
    Stop

    Which would you rather drive?

    Tesla out of those two.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So?

    So he's set out to prove the opposite of what he intended. He's proved that leccy tech is not practical for long journeys.

    Even on a standard tank full of juice a Mira could manage further than that, carrying a full load.

    360kg of petrol would be about 480 litres, which is over 100 gallons. My old petrol Mira had no problems topping 50mpg. So with the same weight of petrol abord a standard Mira could do over 5000 miles.

    Of course if we're being entirely fair 360kg of batteries would take up less space than the equivalent amount of petrol, but it matters not because with 360kg on board the car would have been able to carry little else other than it's driver. And how long exactly would it take to charge those batteries anyway?

    I think it's fair to assume that you could break that record with a bigger vehicle carrying more batteries.

    So he set out to prove that an electric vehicle will go a long way, but what he really proved is that electric vehicles have a long way to go. Ho hum.

  7. Baldychap

    It'll only work if

    I think the only way electric cars would really take off is if they can devise a safe way to pick up power directly from the road. Maybe like a scalectrix or an overhead system like the old trolley buses.

    Each car has a meter fitted and you pay for what you use.

    Saves mucking about with expensive batteries that need hours to charge.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    You can't buy it

    so it may as well be experimental.

    But it's utter crap, so it's clearly not experimental.

    Tesla kicks this thing's ass- it'd be going slow if it took half the time (it'd have been able to get from A to B before the lights needed to come on!). It's got almost the same range, it looks better, it's almost certainly more comfortable and better designed. And over 8000 Lithium batteries is still going to be incredibly expensive.

    http://www.futurevehicletechnologies.com/ had the right idea with their eVaro- 275mpg equivalent, petrol-electric hybrid. Even on longer, more petrol-intensive journeys it'd still cost under a tenner to drive those 345 miles. And it looks better, tops 130 and does 0-60 in under 5 seconds. 175 mile range on pure-electric, then 1 hour recharge using its onboard petrol engine, or 3 hours on mains. Almost limitless range on petrol-electric mode.

    @AC 1602

    That's the beauty of this record- it can't be broken by hooking up another 60 Li-Ion batteries to the same vehicle as there isn't time left in the Universe to have another crack at it.

  9. Ammaross Danan
    FAIL

    Also...

    Let's not forget the idea of driving a 'lecy car in the first place is A) cheaper fuel costs by buying electricity instead of gas, and B) Being "Green".

    Of course, "being Green" is a flat-out FAIL due to the fact using electricity is merely carbon-displacement, since the coal-burning 'lecy factories dump a fair amount of CO2 getting that power to your wall plug.

    Once they convert to a more CO2-friendly means of 'lecy generating (nuclear, wind [sic], or ocean-tidal), electric cars will merely be a marginal benefit over gas-powered 50+mpg diesel burners.

  10. spider from mars
    Thumb Down

    @Ammaross Danan

    FFS, do we have to have this argument debunked every time electric cars come up? go read up on "well to wheel efficiency".

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Long and convoluted response

    1999: MP3 players are so stupid: they only hold 10 tracks, their battery life is rubbish and its so much effort to get music from CD to MP3. Why would anyone use them instead of Discmans or minidisc players?

    2009: Electric cars are rubbish. They aren't as refined as (enter combustion tech that's been gradually refined over the past century) and take ages to charge, don't go quite as fast as top gas guzzlers (apart from concept cars...oh and tesla) and have a rubbish range. They'll clearly never catch on...

    Just to complete the loop of my crude metaphor:

    petrol/diesel cars are casette players/discman: reliable, rubbish in their own way, but refined and everyone was used to them.

    Hybrid cars are minidisc players: seemed like a good idea at the time, but in retrospect a final bow for portable laser/spinning storage tech and early days for ATRAC/MP3 compression. A format doomed to be short-lived and forgettable, but probably important for honing contained technologies.

    The tesla is like (or even better than) the early MP3 players. Overpriced, underachieving in a number of ways but with some undeniably attractive facets.

    electric car's "iPod" will be launched at some stage in the next 5-10 years and we won't be able to contain our excitement for the "leccy" metamorphosis...

    @ anonymous coward: your mass comparison of battery to fuel manages to neatly sidestep the mass difference between the heavy combustion engine and drivetrain of a conventional car versus the distributed transmission-less electric motors of the best electric cars.

    To everyone else: recharging concerns and cell capacities will be eliminated by new anode/cathode designs etc.

    Even coal power stations (with carbon capture) give a cleaner source of energy than the gross inefficiencies of a combustion engine, and as spider from Mars kindy pointed out, that's not even the point.

    I'm not grinding any axes, just find it funny that people feel it necessary to fiercely defend the past over the inevitability of the future. Imagine being pitched both ideas in the dragon's den: one that uses electric energy to directly power a motor and the other that uses the side effects of heat and explosions from burning the decomposed remains of prehistoric sea life. I know which one I'd plump for...

  12. Jonathan Richards
    Headmaster

    Gunnels?

    Wassat? I bet you meant 'gunwales', didn't you. Right noise, wrong spelling. Ask Leicester Haines for an opinion.

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