I'm going to ignore Bill-sourced-threads and answer these issues directly because I wrote a paper on the subject last year (the feasibility of electric cars given current technology) and still find the subject fascinating. In terms of energy, once you store enough battery power to rival a fuel powered car for range, the amount of power consumed by a heater becomes negligible and you can use use a resistive element much as a hairdryer or heat gun does - this is lighter and a lot less hassle than having a closed loop cooling system transferring heat from the drive motor(s) and/or battery. AC is more complex and still the most thermodyamically efficient system is a compression-expansion refrigerator, aka air conditioning and run the compressor from an electric motor. Although I do like the idea of using the peltier effect, but this while much lighter and smaller is dreadful in the efficiency scheme of things. The bottom line, and the conclusion of my paper is that until battery tech comes along in an order of magnitude (ie ten times the capacity for the same weight), pure electric cars will never rival fuel powered ones Martin On 26/02/2012 17:31, Rod Dillman wrote: > Some have mentioned electric conversion as an option for our cars. I am curious as to how the heat and air conditioning is handled in a total electric conversion without a gasoline engine to drive the AC compressor and a radiator to provide a heat source. > > Rod > 10921 > ------------------------------------ To address comments privately to the moderating team, please address: moderators@xxxxxxxxxxx For more info on the list, tech articles, cars for sale see www.dmcnews.com To search the archives or view files, log in at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dmcnewsYahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dmcnews/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dmcnews/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: dmcnews-digest@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx dmcnews-fullfeatured@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: dmcnews-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/