Battery Powered Vehicles, The Future??

[Doodlebug]

The battery powered aeroplane next.

Regarding horses.  Come up our little lane and see
all the fertilizer on the road every day.

[Craig]

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

You are absolutely right. Production of fuel is energy-intensive, and produces (particularly in fault conditions) benzene SO2 and H2S which requires continuous monitoring. The limit for benzene and H2S emission is a few parts per billion currently.

But we're still not out of the petrochemical woods even then, because of our reliance on plastics.

[Pat Pending]

the leaf has a 24kWh (24e3 x 3600 = 86MJ)battery and that gets you 300 miles if driven conservatively.

Not criticism of your post Craig just offering real world experience.

A neighbor has the Nissan. He is a "conservative driver" and claims @ 90 - 100miles per charge, last winter he nicknamed it the "fridge". He challenged the dealer about the range and was lent another vehicle, it was no better. His wish now was that he never bought the thing.

"It's nice to drive and would be great for around town drivers" is his kindest comment.

Until the new technology has become practical, how much i.c.e emissions could be saved by cutting out unnecessary car use?

I can walk so I use legs when I travel the 3/4 mile into the town. If it rains I put on a coat.

When at school in the sixties, only one child in the whole school of seven hundred pupils was brought in a car, those that lived over three miles arrived forty to a bus, under three miles you walked or biked.

Bring back those days, the kids weren't as fat then either.

Congestion charge zones for ALL towns would also be immediately beneficial, yes it can be done.

These are the things that need addressing NOW so that the cars and trucks can travel the open roads at efficient speeds and creating minimum emissions where they belong, instead of spouting political lip service and claptrap to what might happen when we're most of us dead.

Andy.

[Murphyv310]

Absolutely Andy.
Society has got tremendously lazy, kids get ferried everywhere by parents in their SUVs, round here you see very few on bikes or playing football, they are too busy looking at Facebook and all the other things on smartphones.

I also agree regarding range on EVs it's just like the fuel consumption figures bandied about from the car makers, unrealistic to say the least.
Just ask David Boynes what happened to the range on his PHEV he had for just over a year.

[Keithstv]

A friend of mine was loaned an electric car to make an 80 mile journey. The salesman assured him that there would be no problem with the range so he and his wife set off, watching the range indicator dropping. Because of this he decided to top up the charge along the route only to find that the card they had been given was incompatible with the charger so they carried on watching the range falling. Would they have to call the emergency number when they ran out of range. They just made it to their destination. His wife's comment was "Don't you ever bring one of these home".

Until the range of electric cars can be improved and the infrastructure to provide the charging points and the extra power for the charging can be set up, large scale take up of electric vehicles will not happen.

Keith

[Craig]

the leaf has a 24kWh (24e3 x 3600 = 86MJ)battery and that gets you 300 miles if driven conservatively.

Not criticism of your post Craig just offering real world experience.

A neighbor has the Nissan. He is a "conservative driver" and claims @ 90 - 100miles per charge, last winter he nicknamed it the "fridge". He challenged the dealer about the range and was lent another vehicle, it was no better. His wish now was that he never bought the thing.

Well I've just looked a little further - and the official range of the 24kWh Leaf is "up to" 124 miles. Not 300 as I suggested - but in fairness I think I was looking at the spec for the 30kWh version in km. But I suspect that the "up to" numbers are fudged the same way as miles/gallon rating is fudged for regular cars - over-inflated tyres, mirrors tucked in or removed, level smooth road, no wind etc.

But it is easy to criticise affordable electric cars. And I am outspoken about the fact that the practicalities have not been brought out (20% additional power generation, the need for massive copper mining and refining for motors etc etc). I hope though that we agree that something has to be done - we simply cannot continue as we are. Although the state of the art fully electric cars, like Telsa (£100k plus) and the Rimac electric supercars http://www.rimac-automobili.com/en/ at an unknown but probably stratospheric price, at least demonstrate what is possible with today's technology. With technology dribble down, features in Tesla and Rimac will find their way into more modest vehicles.

As an example, I have a series III Jag V12, 1984 vintage. So 33 years old. That gets 18mpg if driven very, very carefully. It has a trip computer and air conditioning, both of which were features of only top cars of the day. There is no anti-lock braking or airbags, or anything that is now accepted as standard features in base model regular cars. As an example, to get the highest safety rating now, a car needs to have automatic braking to prevent rear end shunts if the driver is distracted. So our expectations of petrol/diesel cars has been totally transformed as high end features have dribbled down and endless new and essential features have been added.

You have to look at electric vehicles in the same timeframe.

[ppppenguin]

At the moment, electric and hybrid cars are best suited to urban use. When I get my hybrid I reckon that a lot of journeys will be largely on the battery which has a claimed rnage of 25 or 30 miles (I'd need to look that up) with recharging at home. For longer distance I'd be primarily using the petrol engine with the electrics doing peak load levelling and power boost. For my purposes that's fine. Plus London C-charge exemption and I think free parking at certain places in central London. Doubt I'll use either of those very much.

The technology is only going to get better, as Craig said about Tesla. I wonder how Tesla's new affordable car will work in practice. https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/model3

The problems with supplies of copper, neodymium (for the magnets in the motors) will be worked out. Perhaps with some bumps in the prices but there's no absolute shortage so it's the commercial viability of opening new mines and refineries. Mining has always been a horribly cyclic business and this will be no exception. Look at the massive spikes and dips in the price of gold, oil, copper etc. It was always thus, will likely always be so and we'll recover from it just like we always have done before.

[Murphyv310]

Personally I don't think they are affordable. The cheapest EV that is practical is the Renault Zoe at 14,245 is less batteries, outright sale or battery hire. Add £3k to 5k for the batteries or £50 PM for hire. I'm lucky to spend £30 a month on petrol and a new Panda is under £8000, a Dacia Sandero could be bought for £6000. So on top of battery hire or purchase there is electricity charges.

[ppppenguin]

May not be affordable to you but there is a huge company car market and lots of people are buying new cars via PCP. I don't know if the present usage of PCP is sutainable but it seems you can get a pretty luxurious motor for the price of something ordinary. Presumably this is because the likes of Mercedes, BMW etc series have lower depreciation over 3 years than their more mass market equivalents.

With the glut of 3 year old cars coming on the market at the end of their PCP terms I can see that something might go horribly wrong. More for the companies that offer PCP than the individual motorists.

https://www.ft.com/content/0e651206-0ee1...ba212dce4d
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news...-term.html

[Murphyv310]

Yes Jeffrey, I also think PCP could well run its course. The thing is when hiring batteries if you trade in or sell the car in say three years you have to either transfer the hire or stump up the balance. Two weeks ago a 2014 Nissan leaf was sold on eBay for the princely sum of £4330 it had done 24,000miles but the lease had to be taken over for the batteries. At £4330 the depreciation was huge.