Electric Cars. Yes No or whatever!

[slogen51]

You are right of course

I was playing devils advocate

Clearly if there is less pollution in the air then that benefits us all but I am not sure that mining lithium and banning ICE cars is the way to go - let the technology mature and if EV cars are better , more efficient etc then the demand will increase.

It is a beautiful day but you can't drive anywhere so that's a plus for mother nature but we can still get outside and manufacture some vitamin D.

[C24]

Why do certain members have so many problems using the 'Quote' function, it's not exactly rocket science!

All I do is stick a thick finger on the “ marks and type a comment or two. It seems to work.

That said, I sometimes try to isolate the particular element of the post to avoid taking up space. Not always successful

Does that help you?
‍

[roger4]

It took me ages to spot the "quote" button, and figure out what this was for: up until then I was using cut/paste.

It would help if the "how to quote another post" function was listed in the Frequently Asked Questions page.

[XWP29]

Seems like the general public have different ideas.
Wonder how long it will be before battery cars bad takes over from bad diesel. The very same diesel we were pushed towards by the Government.
https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/ca ... sed-models

[tm74sqn]

How do EVs manage on a frosty, dark night - especially if they break down miles from anywhere? Might need to have the heater on to stop occupants freezing and lights on for safety reasons. In a bad winter vehicles can be stuck for hours, perhaps because police have closed motorway for 'accident investigation'. I guess the only answer (for me anyway) would be no long distance driving at night and/or in freezing weather. Maybe I will have to stick to my coal-burning steam powered vehicle!

[Malcolm]

How do EVs manage on a frosty, dark night - especially if they break down miles from anywhere? Might need to have the heater on to stop occupants freezing and lights on for safety reasons. In a bad winter vehicles can be stuck for hours, perhaps because police have closed motorway for 'accident investigation'. I guess the only answer (for me anyway) would be no long distance driving at night and/or in freezing weather. Maybe I will have to stick to my coal-burning steam powered vehicle!

A fan/oil heater that you plug into the mains is not going to be any more than 2.4kW. I've no idea what the power consumption of the heater in a typical electric car is, but if we assume it's a similar power rating then a 2.4kW heater will last 20 hours on a fully charged 50kWh battery car. Even if it's down to 25% charge it'll last 5 hours.

I doubt the lights have any real drain on the battery in comparison - they won't be more than a few 100W providing you're not lit up like a Christmas tree (fogs on, full beam on,etc).

If you're stuck for hours on a Motorway then you might need to find a charging station once you do get moving again, but the same is true for petrol/diesel car. And yes, I've been stuck for 7 hours on the M42 on a Sunday night.

[Tooks]

How do EVs manage on a frosty, dark night - especially if they break down miles from anywhere? Might need to have the heater on to stop occupants freezing and lights on for safety reasons. In a bad winter vehicles can be stuck for hours, perhaps because police have closed motorway for 'accident investigation'. I guess the only answer (for me anyway) would be no long distance driving at night and/or in freezing weather. Maybe I will have to stick to my coal-burning steam powered vehicle!

If an EV breaks down, it would depend on the nature of the breakdown as to whether the heater still worked. Same as on a ICE vehicle really, if your cam belt has gone, no heat.

EVs have resistive heaters of up to several kW, these are used to warm the cabin as there is very little excess heat generated, and once warmed up some cars have heat pump systems that are more efficient.

Even for those EVs without though, the traction battery would power the heater/heated seats etc for many hours, sufficient to see you through most long road closures.

Exactly how long would depend on the state of charge of your battery, similar to how full your fuel tank is would determine it in an ICE vehicle.

On my ID.3, let’s assume I had 50% of the battery left when I became stuck. The ID.3 has a powerful resistive heater for cabin heating, but once the vehicle is warm it pulls less than a kW to maintain cabin temp, dependent on outside temp, so I’d be good for over 24 hours.

Even with the battery depleted, there’s enough of a buffer to keep vehicle lighting active for many more hours after that. It’s a bit of an extreme case, but designers have thought about such things, so it’s no more hazardous than in a petrol or diesel car.

[Challenger007]

Don't forget the sun - spring tides and all that jazz

According to the www the the friction caused by the movement of the sea ( and land) by the interaction of the moon's gravity is causing the earth's rotation to slow slightly ( hence a occasionally a second is added to a year to keep us in synch with the sun's seasonal position). The loss of angular momentum is causing the moon to speed up and spin away out of orbit ( in a few million years).

So we are all doomed as soon as we are born so let's enjoy ourselves in our petrol cars!

Yes, we are doomed, but this does not mean that we need to dirtiest the planet and make the life of our children and grandchildren unbearable. Already now, our ecology and the quality of food causes allergic reactions in a huge percentage of the population. We should not live in one day without thinking at least about the near future, about our families.

But what about all the children and grandchildren in less developed countries who do not have a safe place to live or a decent water supply let alone democratic freedoms and rights to education. Much of world's population are already living in the Mad Max dystopian world. But let us in the West sort out battery powered cars so we can all breath more easily.

That's it! By abandoning superconsumption, saving finances for the production of surplus products, developed countries could help those countries where there are problems with the same centralized water supply and hygiene. Hygiene and the absence of epidemics of malaria, plague and other bacterial pathologies that spread like wildfire are the first step towards the public health of mankind. After all, many of us do not see anything beyond the foreseeable radius.

[Jaymer15]

Bit late too this one, but Nighthawke and Malcolm have got it pretty much spot on. The problem with car chargers at home is the infrastructure. If most people had a charger at home the network would not take it. I personally think when it comes to new build houses increased use of solar panels will come about with the use of battery storage systems. Your panels charge a battery during the day and release the energy when they stop charging. Only using power from the network when your batteries run low.

When it comes to the charging point it self there are ready charging point that use solar panels. They either use purely the solar panels or can use the panels topping it with power from the network. There are two charging rate for domestic charging points that I know of and they are 7.2Kw and 3.6Kw.

[iainpeden]

This might have been mentioned but I'm not wading through 7 pages!

I read an article the other week about a scheme where the EV's battery is used to store domestic electricity. There's a trial scheme going on at the moment - a single supplier I think and it only works on certain cars. Excess electricity, either produced by local solar power or overnight is stored in the car battery (ies) and used at other times to power the house, apparently the car can power the house for up to two(2) days. There are incentives - do a certain number of full recharges over the month and get a discount on price.

if it's proved to work, how long before we all have a bank of batteries in the garage?

[ArabJazzie]

This might have been mentioned but I'm not wading through 7 pages!

I read an article the other week about a scheme where the EV's battery is used to store domestic electricity. There's a trial scheme going on at the moment - a single supplier I think and it only works on certain cars. Excess electricity, either produced by local solar power or overnight is stored in the car battery (ies) and used at other times to power the house, apparently the car can power the house for up to two(2) days. There are incentives - do a certain number of full recharges over the month and get a discount on price.

if it's proved to work, how long before we all have a bank of batteries in the garage?

I think this ties into what i was saying earlier in the thread regarding the comments from a Japanese engineer who said that it was pointless having all this renewable energy if there was no way of storing the excess. In an ideal world, we all live in houses with a garage, but how many of the population do have this luxury, as i believe flats and terraced houses count for the majority of where people live.

There are ways around all that though, but is the money there after COVID to build suitable infrastructure to build a renewable generation and storage hub for every housing scheme in the land?

[Tooks]

Bit late too this one, but Nighthawke and Malcolm have got it pretty much spot on. The problem with car chargers at home is the infrastructure. If most people had a charger at home the network would not take it. I personally think when it comes to new build houses increased use of solar panels will come about with the use of battery storage systems. Your panels charge a battery during the day and release the energy when they stop charging. Only using power from the network when your batteries run low.

When it comes to the charging point it self there are ready charging point that use solar panels. They either use purely the solar panels or can use the panels topping it with power from the network. There are two charging rate for domestic charging points that I know of and they are 7.2Kw and 3.6Kw.

This is a myth that keeps being repeated, there is enough electricity for an electric car future. Here it is from the horses mouth;

https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/jo ... les-busted

We need to stop repeating this logical fallacy, we’re not moving to 100% electric vehicles overnight, and the drilling, extraction, refining, transport and delivery of fossil fuels takes copious amounts of electricity too.

It’s not a worry, the same as nobody worried about whether there would be enough oil, refining or petrol station capacity when the first petrol cars emerged.

Vehicle to grid is a thing, and is being trialled at scale all over the world, and it will help with any grid balancing that’s required.

[alan_bowling]

https://www.gridserve.com/braintree-overview/

[slogen51]

But when petrol cars were invented they were an improvement on existing modes of transportation basically horse and steam. I don't have any issues with electricity , in fact I think it's a modern day miracle that we are still learning about. But it is the whole concept of being forced by the world Governments into buying battery powered cars I object to - if they are so good then the market should decide?

I saw on top gear the Lamborghini hybrid - no battery just a big capacitor - now if that could be improved and made cheaper than 1 million pounds then we are talking!

[Tooks]

But when petrol cars were invented they were an improvement on existing modes of transportation basically horse and steam. I don't have any issues with electricity , in fact I think it's a modern day miracle that we are still learning about. But it is the whole concept of being forced by the world Governments into buying battery powered cars I object to - if they are so good then the market should decide?

I saw on top gear the Lamborghini hybrid - no battery just a big capacitor - now if that could be improved and made cheaper than 1 million pounds then we are talking!

I think you’ll be still be able to get a petrol car fix for a couple of decades yet, the ban on new ones doesn’t come in until 2030, and then there’ll still be millions of the things trundling around for a while after that.

Governments have got to do something, they’re using carrots at the moment, and later will come the sticks I’m sure. EVs are taking off in the company car world as well, the zero and reduced BIK means more are choosing electric cars, and these are the used cars of the future making EVs a bit more accessible for more people than they are at the moment.

My wife gets her company EV later this week, and several of her team have gone for them as well. The company car fleets always lead the way, and so it seems with EVs too, I expect you’ll be seeing a shed load more EVs on the roads in the next year or two.

Oh, and that Lamborghini was gloriously mad wasn’t it, although as Chris Harris said, not sure what the 30bhp capacitor bit was adding really, seemed a bit gimmicky!

[slogen51]

The company car thing is a very good point and £ sign always drives, pardon the pun, decision making in the office and at home.

I used to have a fleet car because in our department we regularly had to make very long drives often at short notice , from Feltham ( I worked in all the best places!) to Yorkshire etc. I wonder how that would work in a battery car?

Electric cars are undoubtedly getting better but I believe progress will be made by proper market forces not by government stifling innovation by allowing companies to pedal (!) second rate technology.

[Jaymer15]

Bit late too this one, but Nighthawke and Malcolm have got it pretty much spot on. The problem with car chargers at home is the infrastructure. If most people had a charger at home the network would not take it. I personally think when it comes to new build houses increased use of solar panels will come about with the use of battery storage systems. Your panels charge a battery during the day and release the energy when they stop charging. Only using power from the network when your batteries run low.

When it comes to the charging point it self there are ready charging point that use solar panels. They either use purely the solar panels or can use the panels topping it with power from the network. There are two charging rate for domestic charging points that I know of and they are 7.2Kw and 3.6Kw.

This is a myth that keeps being repeated, there is enough electricity for an electric car future. Here it is from the horses mouth;

https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/jo ... les-busted

We need to stop repeating this logical fallacy, we’re not moving to 100% electric vehicles overnight, and the drilling, extraction, refining, transport and delivery of fossil fuels takes copious amounts of electricity too.

It’s not a worry, the same as nobody worried about whether there would be enough oil, refining or petrol station capacity when the first petrol cars emerged.

Vehicle to grid is a thing, and is being trialled at scale all over the world, and it will help with any grid balancing that’s required.

While I dont doubt the capacity to generate the power need. The problem is with delivering this power to the home.

[Philly1971]

Have to say this has been an excellent thread, and perhaps even better when it drifted away from the main subject and became about future alternate energy production, something I am interested in, but know absolutely nothing about. So firstly a shout out to the knowledgeable posters, and damn you for reminding us dreamers that the laws of physics can’t be broken! The whole EV debate is also interesting though. Personally I don’t have any want for an EV, but i might be an ideal owner with this plan for EV to be used as storage for the grid. Like many Londoners my car sits on the drive unused for 5 days a week as I commute by tube to central London. Therefore if my car can be charged at a cheaper night rate, and then sell back to the grid at a higher rate during peak times, then suddenly it might make having an EV more attractive. Obviously if you end up with say 300,00 other EVs also doing the same across the Southeast, then I would assume you have a decent amount to add back into the grid for those high volume times? On the whole debate about electricity generation, surely the one issue alternate energy production shares with traditional is that its generated miles away from where its used. So a question for the knowledgeable, how much generated electricity is still lost in transit from the main power source to the end user? As we look back and realise that some ideas from the past were actually really good, like electric trams, electric milk floats plus reusable bottles etc, was the idea of generating electricity in the middle of each city actually a good idea, albeit not acceptable in the previous carbon burning format of course. If this is the case you think that maybe hydrogen fuel cells should be the aim for the future, with perhaps other forms of generation, such as osmosis, that can also work safely and cleaning right in the middle of certain cities? This country would seem to be ideal for osmosis production as we seem to have many locations with natural sources of fresh water almost adjacent to salt water, and I can certainly think of a few fresh water canals that pump that water into tidal estuarys every time boats pass through. The other question I have relates to tidal energy. Most of the power generation seems to be based on the tidal movement, but what about the change in height? My understanding I’d that the UK has the second highest tidal range in the world, and as someone who works next to the Thames, I see the multiple hundred ton HMS Belfast being lifted more than the height of a double decker bus twice a day, and I can’t help but think how much power would you need to get hydraulic lifts to do the same, and also how much energy would it return when letting down. So is there no way we can harness that difference? Again it might not last long, and would only generate around the tides, but again it would create power right in the middle of the city.

[Malcolm]

On the whole debate about electricity generation, surely the one issue alternate energy production shares with traditional is that its generated miles away from where its used. So a question for the knowledgeable, how much generated electricity is still lost in transit from the main power source to the end user?

UK transmission losses are estimated to be between about 5% and 8%.

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/c ... 38607.html

The other question I have relates to tidal energy. Most of the power generation seems to be based on the tidal movement, but what about the change in height? My understanding I’d that the UK has the second highest tidal range in the world, and as someone who works next to the Thames, I see the multiple hundred ton HMS Belfast being lifted more than the height of a double decker bus twice a day, and I can’t help but think how much power would you need to get hydraulic lifts to do the same, and also how much energy would it return when letting down. So is there no way we can harness that difference? Again it might not last long, and would only generate around the tides, but again it would create power right in the middle of the city.

If you park a 500,000 Ton (500,000,000kg) supertanker somewhere, and the tide rises and falls (say) 10 feet (3 metres) then the potential energy difference between high and low tides is m*g*h = 14715000000 Joules. A KWh is 3.6M Joules, so just over 4000KWh.

The reason a ship floats is that it displaces it's own mass of water. What percentage of the Thames is 'covered' in boats/ships? 1% perhaps? By trying to extract the energy from the rise and fall of the ships you're only getting that 1% of the available energy. All that water has to come from somewhere, and it flows up and down the estuary twice a day (ish). A few large turbines placed in that flow will generate more electricity than the rise and fall of boats/ships ever could.

[Tooks]

Bit late too this one, but Nighthawke and Malcolm have got it pretty much spot on. The problem with car chargers at home is the infrastructure. If most people had a charger at home the network would not take it. I personally think when it comes to new build houses increased use of solar panels will come about with the use of battery storage systems. Your panels charge a battery during the day and release the energy when they stop charging. Only using power from the network when your batteries run low.

When it comes to the charging point it self there are ready charging point that use solar panels. They either use purely the solar panels or can use the panels topping it with power from the network. There are two charging rate for domestic charging points that I know of and they are 7.2Kw and 3.6Kw.

This is a myth that keeps being repeated, there is enough electricity for an electric car future. Here it is from the horses mouth;

https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/jo ... les-busted

We need to stop repeating this logical fallacy, we’re not moving to 100% electric vehicles overnight, and the drilling, extraction, refining, transport and delivery of fossil fuels takes copious amounts of electricity too.

It’s not a worry, the same as nobody worried about whether there would be enough oil, refining or petrol station capacity when the first petrol cars emerged.

Vehicle to grid is a thing, and is being trialled at scale all over the world, and it will help with any grid balancing that’s required.

While I dont doubt the capacity to generate the power need. The problem is with delivering this power to the home.

Most houses already have at least an 80A feed, and many have 100A. A 7kW EV charge point sucks 32A, a 3.6 kW point half that. Most houses will have plenty of capacity to supply a charge point alongside everything else, but yes, DNOs may need to look at beefing up regional supply infrastructure to ensure it can cope.

Many chargers can already be specified with load sharing devices so that if for some reason the house is demanding the lions share of the supply, the EV charger will be dialed down until capacity is available. That and vehicle to grid offers up some creative solutions that may solve as many problems as they bring.

It’s an exciting time I think, played right we can generate many decent jobs as we transition to the new norm.

I must admit I tend to look on the optimistic side of things, but I really don’t think the challenges are beyond us at all.