Electric cars - impressive.

[Bearbonesnorm]

Saw this and thought it might interest some. Some will also recognise many of the locations
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezlC7FUca6c

[darbeze]

It is impressive, but I can't get past what we do to get the raw materials to make the batteries and what we do with them when they are worn out...

Not to mention how the electricity is generated that we use to charge them.

Having said all of that, very impressive engineering and one of my favourite parts of the world.

Si

[mikejd]

I'm with darbeze on this.
Too many unknowns with electric vehicles:
Battery materials and their disposal, provision of sufficient charging points, locations for charging points where they are needed.
Electricity generation: wind power is not the answer. Unreliable, unpredictable, needs huge areas for wind farms so is never going to be built near to populated areas where it's most needed so will continue to despoil our wilder areas. Turbine blades can't be recycled at present and have quite a short life.

[sean_iow]

We should remember that when the first petrol car arrived in the UK (on a train from France) there were no garages or petrol stations at all. They had to buy fuel from the chemist in bottles. They still caught on.

The materials and recycling for the cars and batteries are being worked on/solved at the moment. The speed of development is staggering. You can now get batteries that charge enough for 200 miles use in 20 minutes.

A friend has an electric Merc van*. It is charged from the solar PV on the roof of his industrial unit (he's a PV installer) and also from a battery pack which charges up during the day from the panels and from surplus electricity** off the grid at night. New charging points are being constructed all the time. The internal combustion engine's days are numbered for everyday transport.

The same friend has an electric Merc SUV which out accelerates a 911 GT3, real world test on our short section of duel carriageway The Island is particularity suitable for EVs as you cant go far enough to run out of charge. We also have a lot of solar farms and they are soon to start on an experimental wave generation system just off-shore which can supply 15000 homes.

* The van was chosen partially as the lease payments are cheaper than the diesel equivalently. No road tax and no running costs make it a no-brainier. It's also faster than the diesel version.

** Because the grid cant store electricity, and having too much out of power stations causes an issue, there is a variable tariff which encourages use when they have too much. This will go into negative so they pay you to take it, the battery bank is intelligent so he actually gets paid by SSE to charge his van up!

[Lazarus]

never going to be built near to populated areas where it's most needed

nuke stations and coal are not built in big cities ? The national grid distributes nationally so location is not as important as you think.

The blades last about 25 years ...you think the alternatives have service intervals of that length ?
I don't understand why some hate them I think they look ok personally but accept I am unlikely to persuade you as to why they are an essential part of the generation solution and are here to stay.

[RIP]

I am unlikely to persuade you

You can never persuade people who either have a vested interest in no change or who cannot see the equal/greater number of issues associated with any current way of doing things.

Love the way an interesting discussion about electric cars segued into a list of the claimed negatives about one part of the mix of electricity generation. That particular debate-boat has well and truly sailed and time to move on (*). Yawn.

(*) maybe to the far more useful discussion about the huge amount of power that is currently wasted.

[Rob S]

The torque/power delivery of an electric motor is better suited to a car than an internal combustion engine and it will help to reduce CO2 emissions as well, as long as the power has come from a renewable source. However I think it's unlikely we will ever see the energy density of a battery equal petrol.

In the long term hydrogen fuel cells will probably dominate, with just a small battery to support the process. The best batteries have some nasty chemicals in, you can reclaim them, but currently that costs more than digging fresh ore out of the ground. These batteries last 10-12 years, then it's a huge expense to change them. Another issue, the same as all batteries, is the faster you charge them, the shorter their overall life.

[Rob S]

Going 'green' with our power generation can only be a good thing, but it's not perfect. We now have a relatively unstable grid (compared with before). So now we have swapped old problems for new ones. The large battery installs around the country will help, but frequency will obviously not be as stable as when you have the inertia of several hundred tonnes of rotating generator.

[Bearbonesnorm]

maybe to the far more useful discussion about the huge amount of power that is currently wasted.

This

[slarge]

There are problems with car HV batteries, but they use a similar bunch of raw materials to the mobile phones and laptops that we are all happy to use, and there isn't much of a movement suggesting the charging of those is a problem. If you add the sheer number of battery charging happening at the moment for things kept in pockets it far outweighs (currently) the charging of electric cars.

The argument about "what to do with a car battery at the end of it's life?" - there will be a huge industry developing electricity storage for homes and factories - and for these the energy density and power output is less important than for a car, where range and power is essential. So car batteries at the end of their life will be recycled to power homes etc, which will be charged using solar or wind or water power. It does all make sense for the next 10-20 years at least.

The next steps for cars are likely to be hydrogen fuel cells - pretty green and if the infrastructure can be created will be an ideal solution.

And if you drive an electric car it soon becomes clear how compromised a combustion engine really is. Limited rev range (needs a gearbox), peculiar torque curve (very non linear), and produces vast amounts of stuff you don't want (heat, noise and emissions) in order to get the bit that you do (movement). A very very inefficient way of powering a car.

Of course the ideal would be to be far less reliant on the car - but this would take a mindset shift of massive proportions: we have 70 years of car ownership to overcome - it's engrained that to get from A to B you just jump in the car.

[Rob S]

I read once that only 40% of the energy contained in petrol is actually used to propel you forward. It may be better now, but not by much I suspect.

The wastage of power (as mentioned above) is obviously a big issue, as is the frivolous use of it. Bit mining, heated driveways to melt the 1/2" of snow we get once a year etc.

[Lazarus]

.there isn't much of a movement suggesting the charging of those is a problem

Well no but you are trying to put relatively tiny amounts in and a car battery is a 100kw/hr

It's like the difference between a lake and your bath...one is easy to fill even with poor water pressure the other takes a lot of water especially if you want to do it in a hour.

[fatbikephil]

It's interesting if you read any features on leccy vehicles in the press - they are pretty much universally saying that by 2035 battery technology will have progressed to the point where ranges are similar to a petrol car. Except this isn't going to be the case. We are approaching the limit of Li ion with only a few percent to gain by further improvements on extracting power out of them without them blowing up. It needs a totally new method of storing power and even if some dude has just made the breakthrough in their shed, as we speak, it won't be in a marketable format until ....who knows. As for providing charging facilities.... ain't going to happen. I read a hilarious statement from some dumb politico whereby they were saying how easy it would be to have charging points on street lighting columns. Ho ho ho....

Oh and we've spent the last 20 years trying to get people to do their short journeys by 'active means' (get on yer bike or shanks mare) with all the massive benefits this provides. Guess what kind of journeys leccy cars are most suited to. Oh dear.

And another thing!! They aren't going to be much cheaper so all those poor people will have to take the bus.....but maybe that's the plan

[Shewie]

There's some clever alternative technologies out there but I'm sure somebody like Shell or BP will have bought all the patents and buried them deep in a vault somewhere until fossil fuels are almost depleted.

There's a few mentioned here ..

https://www.pocket-lint.com/gadgets/new ... er-the-air

Personally I'm not ready for an electric car yet, until the range is over 500 miles on a single charge then I'm not interested, who wants to factor in hours of your life sat in service stations for every trip. Plus we don't have off street parking, we're lucky if we can park within sight of the house most nights, BJ hasn't thought about that one

[whitestone]

There's quite a bit of Catch-22 in all of this: you need charging points to make electric cars useful (for the general population) but without the cars putting in the charging points is a risk. In a way it's a bit like the switch to unleaded petrol - for a while just one pump on the forecourt would be unleaded, then two, then three. Eventually every pump would serve unleaded and then the leaded pumps began to be phased out. All this was balanced with the number of new cars coming onto the road, old, leaded ones being taken off, etc. From memory it took about ten years from the first unleaded to the last leaded pump. Locally I'm seeing around 10% of public parking spaces with charging points - not looked at the cost nor the time to charge.

Petrol is extremely energy dense, it's ten times that of TNT for example! Replacing that with something that's as convenient (ignoring the potential explosive possibilities) is not easy, if it were then we'd have done it long ago.

There are other benefits to electric cars: the wasteful, polluting bit of the energy production process is centralised so then much easier to apply "cleaning" technologies; with the right domestic infrastructure the car's battery can act as a local supply so boiling the kettle during the commercial break in Coronation St doesn't need to impact the national grid.

What's not been mentioned is what's going to replace Fuel Excise Duty, it's a nice little earner for the Treasury.

Somewhat futuristically I've just been reading a summary of SSP - Space Solar Panels, the cost of getting material to space is now becoming low enough (per Kg - SpaceX costs roughly 5% of that of the Space Shuttle for example) that it's within the realms of possibility. There's huge losses in the system and with current technologies you are looking at somewhere between 5% & 10% of received energy being available on the ground (depends on the exact method of "beaming" it down to Earth)

[Rob S]

Whether there is a new breakthrough in battery technology or whether hydrogen fuel cells take over, we will have to stop fuelling transport using crude oil distillates sooner rather than later anyway, because the stuff is just so much more useful made into polymers than simply burning it.

Could you imagine how the medical profession would have to change if there were no more polymers for instance. They are in every aspect of our lives now. Once pyrolysis has been perfected, which could be economically feasible with surplus off-peak power, then that could be a source of energy for a while given how many millions of tonnes of it is floating in our oceans. Though it wouldn't do the environment any favours of course .

[Bearbonesnorm]

Sorry if I opened a can of worms with this (interesting though). I merely thought the performance was impressive speaking as someone from a 'petrol background'

[fatbikephil]

Sorry if I opened a can of worms with this (interesting though). I merely thought the performance was impressive speaking as someone from a 'petrol background'

We use Nissan Leafs at work, if you floor it in 'normal' mode it goes like a scalded cat Doesn't like going round corners though.....

[Rob S]

Never driven one, but I believe the standing start of a EV is a real eye opener. That will be because there are only two machines that can produce 100% torque output at 0 RPM, a DC motor and a steam engine!

[techno]

Seen Guy Martin: The World's Fastest Electric Car??
Watch it here on All 4: https://www.channel4.com/programmes/guy ... ectric_car

[slarge]

.there isn't much of a movement suggesting the charging of those is a problem

Well no but you are trying to put relatively tiny amounts in and a car battery is a 100kw/hr

It's like the difference between a lake and your bath...one is easy to fill even with poor water pressure the other takes a lot of water especially if you want to do it in a hour.

Individually you are correct, however when everyone has at least 1 phone and it’s is charged every day, the sheer quantity makes the problem very similar (with the current numbers of electric cars anyway).

[Lazarus]

^ if you mean they both require the same amount of power per day from the grid then you may be correct at currentlevels of ownership of both.

Personally I'm not ready for an electric car yet, until the range is over 500 miles on a single charge then I'm not interested, who wants to factor in hours of your life sat in service stations for every trip.

At legal speeds and all motorway in the Uk you are at over 7 hours driving without stopping. Realistically a journey of that length is going to be nearer 10 hours than 7. If you can do all that without stopping and taking a break for food or a "comfort break" or rest then I am impressed/surprised.
Personally i have never done 500 miles in a car in one trip [and mine only does 330 miles on a full tank[gas/lpg] anyway] in day and i think you are setting the bar incredibly high there.

What's not been mentioned is what's going to replace Fuel Excise Duty, it's a nice little earner for the Treasury.

Dont worry governments never struggle to discover a way to tax us - presumably a GPS and tax per mile.

As for providing charging facilities.... ain't going to happen

Its happening allready and the beauty is that aevery urban road and plenty of others allready have electricity supply to them - I know its not that easy due to the voltages etc - but i am not sure why you think that something that is happening wont happen. When the leafs were first out[mate bought one] you could charge at home or at Nissan[ for free iirc] and that was oretty much it , its clealry ot the same now.

As for the cars not a petrol head i drive a 3 cylinder 1.2 LPG car that probably wont do 100 - never tried and i assume does 0-60 in about 20 seconds. Its c ertainy getting harder ot get fuel for that a s plenty of stations have topped doing it .

[Bearbonesnorm]

All this talk of electric cars has just made me remember to go and order some VP C16 ... fully leaded and 120 RON

[RIP]

The wastage of power (as mentioned above) is obviously a big issue, as is the frivolous use of it. Bit mining, heated driveways to melt the 1/2" of snow we get once a year etc.

Thanks Rob, yes "frivolous" is really what I meant. Although "wastage" applies too. I suppose what's one person's frivolous is another person's patio heater so who am I to judge .

Some good points from Lazarus just up there too...

Interesting discussion.

[Verena]

Well, I like my Leaf.
Drives well, including corners btw, I can fit my bike in it, looks ok, and I can charge it at home on 100 percent renewable electricity thanks to ovo. And yes, I know lucky to have a drive to do that on.
Even with the basic model and a range of only 165 miles, so far I've been able to do everything I've wanted or needed to.
The biggest inconvenience charging wise have been a few leisurely lunch breaks in Llanidloes. I would say that's bearable