Battery Powered Vehicles, The Future??

[ppppenguin]

By 2040 I'm pretty sure that advances in technology and market forces will give us a green (or at least greenish) outcome. Regardless of what politicians say. Though governments can steer the process by fiscal and regulatory meausres. And frequenctly get things wrong. The market gets things wrong too but it's inherently self correcting with bankruptcies and takeovers being the price for failure. The market can't always work. For public goods such as water quality, education and healthcare the market frequently gives perverse outcomes and so needs government intervention.

Obvious examples of government intervention in energy policy:
Tax on petrol and diesel
Subsisides and tax breaks for alternative fuel cars (I'm taking delivery of a hybrid later in the year)
Solar PV feed in tariffs
Waiving of London C charge for ultra low and zero emission vehicles

Less obvious interventions include:
Planning policy for siting of wind turbines
Hidden or implicit subsidies for coal and oil (more in the US than UK)

Air and sea transport are more difficult but again technology will have a huge impact. None of us can predict the future of new ships partly powered by sail or electrically powered aircraft. Both sound a bit unlikely at present but there's R&D happening on both. Why shouldn't tractors and other farm machinery be electric or hybrid? Operating over short distances with fairly predicatble usage and near charging facilities. There's no reason I can see why virtually all urban delivery vehicles shouldn't be electric within a few years. May need more of a fiscal nudge at the moment but again the market will probably deal with the problem in a few years.

[Terry]

There's no reason I can see why virtually all urban delivery vehicles shouldn't be electric within a few years. 

Well, there's nothing like reinventing the wheel - a particularly appropriate expression in this context!

I well remember when virtually all* bread and milk deliveries were made using electric vehicles!



* One exception where I grew up in Grays (Essex) was a small independent dairy who continued to use horse drawn floats for many years.

[boater sam]

When I see an electric tractor pulling a 12 share plough through clay soil over a 40 acre field all day long, then I may be less critical!

[ppppenguin]

Indeed. Bring back horse drawn delivery vehicles! Free fertiliser for your garden too

[Keithstv]

But then the government would have to bring in new equine emission regulations

Catalytic converter for a horse?

Keith

[Murphyv310]

This http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2010/ph240/eason2/ is a fairly good analysis on global lithium production, accessible reserves, and how many Nissan Leaf's you could build from those. The numbers do not stack up, alas.

The Leaf has a 24kWh (24e3 x 3600 = 86MJ) battery and that gets you 300 miles if driven conservatively. Annual mileage is say 12,000 miles, or about 1 recharge per week. There are 32 million domestic cars in the UK, so it would take 86e6 x 32e6 = 2.7e15J per week to charge them. Double that for energy losses in distribution, power conversion efficiency in the charger, and battery charge efficiency and get to 5.4e15J per week of generation capacity.

Divide by the number of seconds in the week (6e5) to get generation power of 9GW. Current grid capacity is 45GW, which we use completely during the Winter.. So to deal with a complete electrification of domestic cars with Nissan Leafs would take a 20% increase in electricity generation capacity. If everyone owned a Tesla (I wish!) with an 85kWh battery we would need to almost double the energy generation capacity to charge them.

And none of those estimates takes account of commercial vehicles.

So although the aim to reduce vehicle emissions to zero is laudable, the practicalities (at this point) just don't stack up.

OK I hear you say - fuel cells. The energy equation still stands though. There is a similar energy cost associated with production of hydrogen-rich fuels. There is alas no escape from the conundrum.

Craig

Ah but.
What about the electricity used at present in oil refineries, you need to factor that into the equation too.

[Nick]

Small but important side effect of electric vehicles...

...they scare the emergency services.

We have friends who are firemen, and they are really worried by accidents involving electric vehicles - there is an enormous amount of stored energy there, potentially (!) in damaged batteries or fuel cells - so called "kill switches" (nominative determinism at work there!) are not much use of the cells are compromised.

With hydrocarbon fuel, the risk can be mitigated by foam/powder etc., but a damaged electric vehicle is highly unpredictable.

[Kalee20]

I'm astounded by the news that all internal combustion engined cars will be banned by 2040.

Err... That's not what I'd heard! Only the sale of new, petrol and diesel ones will be banned. Nothing about petrol/diesel cars bought prior to 2040 being banned.
Also, presumably LPG-engined cars can still be sold (which ARE internal combustion), I haven't heard anything about these being phased out!
I agree with Jeffrey, exciting times ahead!

[pwdrive]

Yes, they'll be running on shale gas, they'll be called a Frakcar

Lawrence.

[ppppenguin]

The 2040 declaration by HMG is timid. Before then technology and market forces shoudl have arrived at one or more solutions.

Predicting the future is always difficult but...

We're not knee deep in horse ordure - somebody invented motorised transport.
We're not out of oil as many Jeremiahs predicted - we're awash with oil and gas. The Saudis are feeling uncomfortable to put it mildly.
The predictions made in "Limits to Growth" have all essentially been bypassed by a mixture of technology, markets and politics

There are plenty of problems in the world. Plenty of nasty, big intractable ones. There are far too many people living in poverty, misery and subjugation. There are going to be lots of bumps in the road to the future. Some of them very unpleasant. But humanity came back from WW1 and WW2. It came back from the oil crisis, the dotcom bubble and much more.

Now for a large fee I will give my guaranteed predictions for 25 years time

Where's that large jar of snake oil......