Electric Cars. Yes No or whatever!

[ArabJazzie]

There’s a lot of scaremongering going on in this thread!

I’ve been driving hybrid or electric since 2014, I’ve covered over 100,000 electric miles in that time.

Current vehicle is a VW ID.3, and yes I have home charging, but every car in the country parks somewhere overnight even if it’s not on your own drive. The trick will be to get the charging access to where these cars sit all night.

The electricity infrastructure will easily cope with an electric car future, given suitable will and investment, it’s not like oil extraction, refining into road fuels and distribution doesn’t require any electricity, it’s a surprising amount.

At an Ionity ChargePoint I can put 5 miles per minute back into the ID.3, so a 20 minute charge is circa 100 miles. The range of a fully charged battery is around 190 miles even in the winter, and much further in the summer, and once you get your head around it, it’s not a problem.

People always come up with a myriad of reasons why electric cars won’t work for them, but they work for many people when you look at the average daily mileage most people cover.

Thing is, you have been driving your electric vehicles in your world, and in my world for daily use, an electric car would be ideal for our couple of miles each way town commutes to work, although i think the future is PHEVs. But for the freedom that my wife and i live by, we need 2 cars and cannot afford the prices for a start.

Its easy for you with home charging and i take it a driveway, but how do i get home charging in a housing scheme of flats built 100 years ago, where parking is at a premium and we never get the same parking spot twice?

I have no doubts about the Electrical generation to support the future, but the Infrastructure is not yet available in enough locations to support widespread electric car use, and we only have 9 years to achieve a good proportion of that. If you separate that from suitable will and investment, i have watched my council build a car park with some charging points as part of a housing scheme redevelopment that is used very little. In my area, the council is building a nursery on land that would have been ideal for a portion to be made into a car park with charging points, that may have also allowed the main street to be remodelled to make it safer, along with more charging points.

Its ok saying it works for an average daily mileage, and i cannot dispute that, but in normal times, my wife and i could fill up the V6, take a weekend trip away and complete a 350 mile round trip, visit many places and still have a quarter tank if i behave. If i apply quarter charge limits i live by now, using the 200 mile range on an electric car means i have to miss out on one of my stop offs because i have to plan to give the car a quick 20 minutes top up. If i cant get an overnight charge, i then have to miss out on more because i have to get top offs again.

Give me the infrastructure, give me an affordable PHEV with suitable range on both systems, and i will happily whine my way around the streets.

[Malcolm]

The tides repeat on about a 12 hour cycle. In it's simplest form, 'slack tide generation' lasts 3 hours (at high tide). Then 'peak generation' 3 hours as the tide goes out, then slack again for 3 hours (low tide) then peak again for 3 hours as the tide comes back in. The cycle is actually a sine wave though - so there is some generating capacity either side of low and high tides. And conversely peak generation actually reaches that peak, it's not at peak for the whole period.

The tides are caused by the moon and affect the whole earth. The UK only covers a small portion of the globe. Therefore high and low tides around the country only vary by an hour or two. Can't quickly find the figures but ISTR about 3 hours from Lands End to John O'Groats, or Lowestoft, or somewhere. The idea that you can generate all your leccie from a few tidal stations in the Bristol channel is just plain wrong. You would need many stations spread strategically around the country so that when one area is slack another is at peak. With only a 2-3 hour variation around the whole country, I'd say that is impossible. Even if it were possible building 25-50 stations around the country is going to be a lot more expensive than half a dozen Hinkley Points, and probably just as environmentally damaging.

First thing, I don’t think anyone is pinning their hopes on tidal power solving all our electric generation needs, especially with only one site siting in the Bristol Channel.

Did you really need to tell us the moon is what drives our tidal cycle? High tides advance day to day at around 40 mins on Spring tides, and just over the hour at Neap tides. I do dispute your slack water times, but it may be I am looking at it from my view point of working beside a tidal estuary, and I think you are looking at it when a device is running fast enough to efficiently generate power.

Some of what I base the next bit on may need better technology and more efficient generators, but if slack water only last say, just over an hour at each end at Spring tide, and 2 hours for Neap, there is potential for about 16-20 hours meaningful flow per day, which is variable through any 14 day tide cycle. Again though, I have to dispute your 2-3 hour Tidal Variation around the country as it appears that while Wick is at high tide, Newlyn is at low tide. And to support what I said in my previous post, Wick today hit high tide at 05.56hrs, Dundee 09.41hrs and Sunderland 10.14hrs, so when 1 is sitting at high tide slack water, the other 2 are still generating, although Dundee may be coming on grid when Sunderland is dropping off as the cycle develops.

Like I alluded to at the start, it would be foolish to pin our hopes on harnessing Tidal Power to meet our needs, but as part of the whole drive towards greener Electricity Generation, surely it has a role to play where Offshore Wind Generation is also taking place. I also wonder how much it would cost to add a Wave and Tidal generation system close to an area where OWG is landed and is tapped into the grid through the same land cables.

But all of this is pointless if there is no way of storing any excess power generated to prevent us having to rely on a Nuclear Power Plant to fill the gaps.

Ok, sorry my oversimplifications upset you.

If tidal flows can be modelled as sinusoidal (ok another approximation), then turbines will be operating at above 70% efficiency for half the time (root(2)/2 = 0.7071), and above 92% efficiency for one quarter of the time(sin(3pi/8)). Similarly they will be operating below 70% efficiency for half the time and below 38% efficiency (sin(pi/8)) for one quarter of the time. This assumes the turbines are sized such that they can generate at 100% efficiency when the tidal flow is at it's peak, and that generating efficiency is proportional to tidal flow rate.

The Newlyn/Wick thing being at high/low at the same time is a problem - since both will be close to slack at the same time. You actually want the different generating locations to be 3-4 hours different to each other because they can then fill in each others gaps - one will be close to max-flow whilst the other is close to slack. Places on opposite sides of the country generally have opposite tides - look at Weston-Super-Mare and Margate, so again a problem.

East/West facing estuaries have higher tidal flows than might be expected because the water is 'bottled' up at the ends, so the water 'piles up' at high tide. That's why the Bristol Channel is a good candidate. There are others, but the trick is to pick pairs that have a roughly one quarter tidal time difference between them.

I'm actually fairly positive on the idea of tidal - it's one of the renewables that could take over base load if properly planned. (Geothermal is another).

[Tooks]

There’s a lot of scaremongering going on in this thread!

I’ve been driving hybrid or electric since 2014, I’ve covered over 100,000 electric miles in that time.

Current vehicle is a VW ID.3, and yes I have home charging, but every car in the country parks somewhere overnight even if it’s not on your own drive. The trick will be to get the charging access to where these cars sit all night.

The electricity infrastructure will easily cope with an electric car future, given suitable will and investment, it’s not like oil extraction, refining into road fuels and distribution doesn’t require any electricity, it’s a surprising amount.

At an Ionity ChargePoint I can put 5 miles per minute back into the ID.3, so a 20 minute charge is circa 100 miles. The range of a fully charged battery is around 190 miles even in the winter, and much further in the summer, and once you get your head around it, it’s not a problem.

People always come up with a myriad of reasons why electric cars won’t work for them, but they work for many people when you look at the average daily mileage most people cover.

Thing is, you have been driving your electric vehicles in your world, and in my world for daily use, an electric car would be ideal for our couple of miles each way town commutes to work, although i think the future is PHEVs. But for the freedom that my wife and i live by, we need 2 cars and cannot afford the prices for a start.

Its easy for you with home charging and i take it a driveway, but how do i get home charging in a housing scheme of flats built 100 years ago, where parking is at a premium and we never get the same parking spot twice?

I have no doubts about the Electrical generation to support the future, but the Infrastructure is not yet available in enough locations to support widespread electric car use, and we only have 9 years to achieve a good proportion of that. If you separate that from suitable will and investment, i have watched my council build a car park with some charging points as part of a housing scheme redevelopment that is used very little. In my area, the council is building a nursery on land that would have been ideal for a portion to be made into a car park with charging points, that may have also allowed the main street to be remodelled to make it safer, along with more charging points.

Its ok saying it works for an average daily mileage, and i cannot dispute that, but in normal times, my wife and i could fill up the V6, take a weekend trip away and complete a 350 mile round trip, visit many places and still have a quarter tank if i behave. If i apply quarter charge limits i live by now, using the 200 mile range on an electric car means i have to miss out on one of my stop offs because i have to plan to give the car a quick 20 minutes top up. If i cant get an overnight charge, i then have to miss out on more because i have to get top offs again.

Give me the infrastructure, give me an affordable PHEV with suitable range on both systems, and i will happily whine my way around the streets.

I agree there remain some significant obstacles to overcome, nobody is saying otherwise, and EVs work for some more than others right now.

The nations cars all park somewhere every single day/night, the challenge is to get the charging infrastructure to those places. Street furniture, kerbs, lamp posts, car parks, wherever cars park, we need to have somewhere they can plug in.

There’s a company called Gridserve that has launched its first site down in Essex, they have plans for hundreds more. It’s an electric fuel station and the idea is that people will visit them like they do petrol stations now, charging whilst they do something else like shopping. For a lot of people, their weekly mileage will be covered by a 1hr visit. For those on longer journeys, the same site can be used for rapid charging.

Councils/government and private enterprise have started putting charging infrastructure in, but often it’s been done with no knowledge of what/how EV owners want to use charge points. I keep hearing that the UK has more charge points than petrol pumps, but of course that ignores the realities of time to charge versus refueling with liquid fuels. Most cars spend more time stopped somewhere than they are moving, that’s where they need to be recharged, whether that’s at home, in a car park or kerbside.

It’s not going to be an overnight change, EVs are still expensive and the infrastructure needs to be built, and who knows maybe the future lays in a different direction entirely. We can’t carry on as we are though, that much is certain, and I say that as somebody who isn’t an ‘eco mentalist’ and who likes a V6 as much as the next bloke. :-)

[paddyboy]

I’ll stick with my lovely, torquey, 4 litre diesel, thanks

[Sparts99]

My Bristol Channel comment has generated some interesting comments here. The BNFL engineer I spoke to said there is enough flow in the Bristol Channel 24/7, it doesn't actually stop, and it is a vast body of water, maybe at times moving very slowly but nevertheless carries a lot of energy, hence the theoretical concept and someone did the sums. Not me, I failed my sums O level first time round. The stumbling block would have been the infrastructure, absolutely massive and the cost, time to build it etc, a non starter but a demonstration that the energy is there, we just have to get at it.

[ArabJazzie]

Ok, sorry my oversimplifications upset you.

If tidal flows can be modelled as sinusoidal (ok another approximation), then turbines will be operating at above 70% efficiency for half the time (root(2)/2 = 0.7071), and above 92% efficiency for one quarter of the time(sin(3pi/8)). Similarly they will be operating below 70% efficiency for half the time and below 38% efficiency (sin(pi/8)) for one quarter of the time. This assumes the turbines are sized such that they can generate at 100% efficiency when the tidal flow is at it's peak, and that generating efficiency is proportional to tidal flow rate.

The Newlyn/Wick thing being at high/low at the same time is a problem - since both will be close to slack at the same time. You actually want the different generating locations to be 3-4 hours different to each other because they can then fill in each others gaps - one will be close to max-flow whilst the other is close to slack. Places on opposite sides of the country generally have opposite tides - look at Weston-Super-Mare and Margate, so again a problem.

East/West facing estuaries have higher tidal flows than might be expected because the water is 'bottled' up at the ends, so the water 'piles up' at high tide. That's why the Bristol Channel is a good candidate. There are others, but the trick is to pick pairs that have a roughly one quarter tidal time difference between them.

I'm actually fairly positive on the idea of tidal - it's one of the renewables that could take over base load if properly planned. (Geothermal is another).

You have definitely not upset me in this! How can i be upset when you are helping my understanding of this, although i will never pretend i understand everything.

I am not seeing as much of a problem in the High/Low thing as if Tidal Generation plants are co-located with current off shore wind farms, they are dotted far enough apart that one tidal plant is coming on while another is at peak and one dropping off. I am however minded to think of turbulence being an issue?

The east/west thing is interesting as my work is on the banks of the Tay Estuary, but to harness Tidal power, are you getting at that it needs to be in an Estuary like the Tay, Forth, Tyne, Severn or Thames to be most effective? I expected the concept to be more widespread around the coast rather than a dozen estuaries.

Is geothermal going to generate electricity as i understood that to be used to reduce the energy required for heating and the like?

[C24]

The direction of the estuary is not really relevant except that the water flow would be influenced by the prevailing wind.

The three dimensional profile of the seabed is the biggest factor. The Moon pulls the volume of water as it moves around the world. Watch the sea as it moves over the seabed at South .stack and around the Skerries if you get the chance to visit wonderful Angelsey/Holy Island.
The Bay of Fundy has one of the biggest flow rates, look at the map/charts for its orientation etc.


E&OE

[XWP29]

Our predecessors channelled power with tidal mill ponds. Is there a need to make huge industrial monoliths when a series of local tide utilisation is possible.

[tm74sqn]

Where does the energy come from, for instance tidal and geothermal energy? With tidal, does it come from the interaction between the earth and the moon - if so does the moon slow down very slightly so that in a few years it would de-orbit and come crashing to earth! With geothermal, will the earth's surface close to the extraction point cool - if so in a few years the molten core of the earth may distort producing earth quakes? Mind you, the 'few years' could be quite a long time! Solar energy sounds a safer bet as the sun will keep putting out the same amount of energy no matter how many solar panels we use on earth.

[slogen51]

Conservation of energy - the tidal energy or kinetic energy is turned into electrical energy which is another form of kinetic or potential energy. Weirdly the effect of the moon's gravity on earth , tides etc is slowing down the earth's rotation and that loss of motion is compensated by the moon speeding up in its orbit and moving further away at about 4cm per year. ( I just read that last bit on Google!!)

I think we already have cheap sources of power in the form of nuclear fission but unfortunately nuclear power has become toxic in more ways than one.

Hopefully advances in battery technology will either speed up charging to under 10 minutes or preferably drastically improve the range to over 500 miles or even 1000 miles would be perfect. I could tolerate an overnight charge if I got two weeks or a months worth of motoring.

[ArabJazzie]

Where does the energy come from, for instance tidal and geothermal energy? With tidal, does it come from the interaction between the earth and the moon - if so does the moon slow down very slightly so that in a few years it would de-orbit and come crashing to earth! With geothermal, will the earth's surface close to the extraction point cool - if so in a few years the molten core of the earth may distort producing earth quakes? Mind you, the 'few years' could be quite a long time! Solar energy sounds a safer bet as the sun will keep putting out the same amount of energy no matter how many solar panels we use on earth.

I dont know what you are trying to get at here? Last time i looked into this at any depth, Tidal power is harnessed by turbines secured to the sea bed, in a similar way that wind turbines work.

As to Solar being a safer bet, although i believe technology has advanced, i look out my window today as wonder?

[alan_bowling]

Got one now £22k new for an estate with a real world range of 200 miles, 0-60 in 7.3 seconds, and pretty well equipped. Auto lights and wipers, rear view camera, DAB, SatNav, Electric driver seat, Climate control, heated front seats, keyless entry, leather seats. Really nice car and drives well, and zero road tax to boot!

[ArabJazzie]

Got one now £22k new for an estate with a real world range of 200 miles, 0-60 in 7.3 seconds, and pretty well equipped. Auto lights and wipers, rear view camera, DAB, SatNav, Electric driver seat, Climate control, heated front seats, keyless entry, leather seats. Really nice car and drives well, and zero road tax to boot!

What make/model?

[Tooks]

Got one now £22k new for an estate with a real world range of 200 miles, 0-60 in 7.3 seconds, and pretty well equipped. Auto lights and wipers, rear view camera, DAB, SatNav, Electric driver seat, Climate control, heated front seats, keyless entry, leather seats. Really nice car and drives well, and zero road tax to boot!

What make/model?

MG5 is the only EV I know that fits that description?

People who own them seem very happy.

[Mike]

£22k for a car that can't even go from Preston to London without having to stop for hours to recharge?

Errrmmm.......no thanks!

[Tooks]

£22k for a car that can't even go from Preston to London without having to stop for hours to recharge?

Errrmmm.......no thanks!

You wouldn’t need to stop for ‘hours’.

On a CCS Rapid Charger, the MG5 can recharge at a peak 80kW, so 10-80% battery charge would be around 30 mins.

To get to London from Preston, assuming you had charging at the end, you’d probably need no more than 10 mins, and you’d have no Congestion Charge either.

As I say, EVs at current ranges and with current infrastructure aren’t for everybody, but it’s incorrect you’d be charging for hours to do the trip you mentioned.

[Mike]

You wouldn’t need to stop for ‘hours’.

On a CCS Rapid Charger, the MG5 can recharge at a peak 80kW, so 10-80% battery charge would be around 30 mins.

To get to London from Preston, assuming you had charging at the end, you’d probably need no more than 10 mins, and you’d have no Congestion Charge either.

As I say, EVs at current ranges and with current infrastructure aren’t for everybody, but it’s incorrect you’d be charging for hours to do the trip you mentioned.

I was only taking London & Preston as examples as they're just over 200 miles apart, so we can forget the Congestion Charge.
You have to take into account the immediate availability of a Rapid Charger when one is required as you could easily spend hours queueing for one (and many, many hours/days/months over the rest of your life)!

The entire of the UK needs a vast amount of money spent on infrastructure to make chargers quickly available before this is going to work.

My diesel Peugeot 308 costs only £30 a year in road tax, so the free road tax for an electric vehicle isn't much of an incentive to buy one.

[Tooks]

I was only taking London & Preston as examples as they're just over 200 miles apart, so we can forget the Congestion Charge.
You have to take into account the immediate availability of a Rapid Charger when one is required as you could easily spend hours queueing for one (and many, many hours/days/months over the rest of your life)!

The entire of the UK needs a vast amount of money spent on infrastructure to make chargers quickly available before this is going to work.

My diesel Peugeot 308 costs only £30 a year in road tax, so the free road tax for an electric vehicle isn't much of an incentive to buy one.

But it’s still wrong to suggest that a just over 200 mile trip would require ‘hours’ of charging.

I’ve never queued for a rapid charger in over 5 years, and that’s from when rapid chargers were very few and far between to currently where they’re much more common.

Instavolt are installing banks of up to 8 rapids at a time now, Ionity are all multi charge sites and the petrol giants are also starting to install multiple rapid chargers at their forecourts. Then you’ve got Gridserve whose only business is green energy storage and grid balancing, with EV car charging as a useful sideline, they’re planning 100’s of sites.

The irony is that as EVs have got longer ranges, the need for me to use Rapid Chargers has lessened. With my own just under 200 mile one way journey, I don’t need to charge at all until I get to my destination, where I leave it overnight.

You’re correct though, the amount and location of public chargers of all types will need to go up as EV ownership goes up, and EVs are selling well now.

It will though, just as petrol and diesel stations emerged to support ICE cars and vans.

I’m not here to tell anybody they should be driving EV, just trying to paint a factual picture by somebody who is actually driving one now.

[Mike]

Interesting stuff Tooks, hopefully the supply of rapid chargers can keep well ahead of the demand for EVs, and that the range per charge improves greatly in the next couple of years.

[tm74sqn]

Where does the energy come from, for instance tidal and geothermal energy? With tidal, does it come from the interaction between the earth and the moon - if so does the moon slow down very slightly so that in a few years it would de-orbit and come crashing to earth! With geothermal, will the earth's surface close to the extraction point cool - if so in a few years the molten core of the earth may distort producing earth quakes? Mind you, the 'few years' could be quite a long time! Solar energy sounds a safer bet as the sun will keep putting out the same amount of energy no matter how many solar panels we use on earth.

I dont know what you are trying to get at here? Last time i looked into this at any depth, Tidal power is harnessed by turbines secured to the sea bed, in a similar way that wind turbines work.

As to Solar being a safer bet, although i believe technology has advanced, i look out my window today as wonder?

For tidal turbines to work, water has to flow past/through them - tides - the sea water is moved by the energy provided by earth-moon interaction. You get nought for ought . . . .
Similar problem (possibly) with wind turbines - too many could kill the trade winds, or at least change the weather!