Electric Cars.

[Nigel R]

"I do quite like the new smart electric for commuting so you never know the wifes Nissan micra may be the first to go!"

If you already own two cars then going electric for the local trips and keeping an ICE for the long haul / heavy duties is a perfect mix. I'd happily have that mix right now, my commutes are predictable and short, but electric aren't cheap enough yet.

[Andy Meade]

Posted by Andrew767 on 08/07/2019 17:18:23:

Thats impressive Andy...40mls. Is yours the 2.4ltr version with the bigger battery?

Best i've ever managed is 30 in summer and around 25 in winter. Had mine for two years so it's the older 2.0 ltr generator . Regen saves on the brake pads too!!

Andrew

 

Hi Andrew, no it's an earlier 2014 model. We found going in for all the (three!) recall notices from Mitsubishi made a difference, as the software was updated as well as some mechanical issues. Also driving in ECO mode (the green button on the centre dash) certainly helps. Wife is particularly taken with it as it's so easy to drive and very comfortable.

Happy electrickering.

 

Edited By Andy Meade on 09/07/2019 15:29:33

[GrahamWh]

Its all very interesting, but I can see a couple of big problems with us all being forced to go electric with our cars.

Lets say, for simplicity, that electric cars take 40 min to charge at a motorway service station half way through a journey. Petrol cars take 4 minutes to fill up.

The services have maybe 15 petrol pumps. Just using these numbers to make the maths easy, but they are reasonable.

If all the cars were to be electric, the same number of cars need ten times as long to charge as they used to to fill with petrol, so now the station will need 150 charge points and parking spaces to accommodate the same number of cars. Imagine the queues or the land needed to make 150 charging points easily accessible!

Another - is there enough lithium to make batteries for X hundreds of millions of the cars that people have?

Perhaps this will be a technology for the better of only.

What do you think?

[Former Member]

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[Don Fry]

Graham, gut feeling, I would reckon, charging facilities will keep pace with demand. But only if the suppliers of the charge points get a profit, or the taxpayer could continues to subsidise the expansion program. No such thing as a free lunch.

Technology for the better off only. See the first post on this thread. Goes full circle. But, again, gut feeling, renewables will cover the electricity needs. If, and big if, the cars get much lighter, much slower. Not necessarily much longer journey times, but more boring. 

Lithium production. Try Googling, "positive environmental impact, lithium mining" Would not get planning permission in the shires. Multiply production by 10,000, might have a big issue.

Edited By Don Fry on 09/07/2019 19:58:37

[Former Member]

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[Former Member]

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[Former Member]

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[Keith Miles 2]

What the "80% renewables by 2030" statement misses out is any realistic expectation that it will meet future energy demands.

At present, irrespective of all the hype, I am still to be convinced that battery powered vehicles, or battery powered anything for that matter, offers a realistic and practical long term solution either in terms of efficiency, convenience or reductions in environmental impact.

Privately owned electrically powered vehicles will, for a number of simple reasons, have a limited market for the foreseeable future, in my view. Cost and lack of off-road parking for charging (or a standardised widespread and readily accessible charging infrastructure) will, alone, limit take-up and thereby impede any timely progress in reducing the price of acquisition. Catch 22?

As for the argument, that I read somewhere, that in the early days of the motor vehicle there was little infrastructure to support it, that fails to take into account that the world was a very different place then. In particular, private transport was, arguably, an unnecessary luxury confined to the wealthy which is certainly not the case today!

Whilst it might be true that what you have never had you never miss, it is equally the case that we are all reluctant to give up what we already have for something unfamiliar which, from our personal standpoint, would be, or might be regarded as, a less convenient, less flexible and less practical alternative.

Currently, I wonder if, in fact, the days of widespread private vehicle ownership are numbered!

[Former Member]

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[Don Fry]

Now I accept I may be wrong, and I have no intention of checking, but does the aspiration of "80% renewables by 2030", bandied about for several threads, not have a bit missing, "and other low carbon sources" , on the back of the sentence.

The missing bit covers the Nuclear Fission stations. Cheap, clean, safe, no mess afterwards.

Edited By Don Fry on 10/07/2019 13:51:12

[Nigel R]

Don, if you mean cheap, clean, no mess, then I'm not sure you mean either fission or fusion.

Fission is not particularly cheap, although it is clean, but does leave rather a lot of neutron activated mess to deal with (unless the breeder types become more widespread).

As for fusion, yes, clean, no mess, but, definitely not cheap. Time wise, even ITER isn't scheduled for first plasma operation until 2025. The next generation commercial demonstrator won't start construction until 2030 at least. The following generation of fusion reactors that might be commercial grid viable, if I'm lucky, I might see happen in my lifetime...

[Don Fry]

Nigel you are quite right, and I was being ironic that fission reactors can even be in the same sentence as renewables as an answer to any sort of problem, except the enforced creation of large wildlife parks.

[Don Fry]

Fusion has been 5 to 10 years away for the last 50 years

[Stuart C]

What are the proposals for upgrading the power distribution network? Have we years of intensive road-works ahead of us? Does range matter when stuck in continuous traffic jams?

[IDD15]

The BBC have done a pretty good Q&A on electric cars which those who have not been paying attention in the previous 74 pages of this thread may find useful.

BBC Q&A

As an EV driver it seems fair and accurate piece really. Strangely nobody mentioned caravans...

Idd

[Nigel R]

Sorry Don missed the irony!

The 10 years away had at least been increased now to 20+.

I'm generally quite pro fission. Just not the way soviet era Russia did it, ie on the cheap and mainly to make weapons grade plutonium in horribly unsafe reactors.

China are building a lot of reactors. Becoming quite the leading experts in the field. Latest Russian designs now moving to get certified to western standard too. And Heres us paying the french to make one, originally intended to be with Chinese help. Funny old world.

[Don Fry]

Absolutely right. I happen to still own a house downwind of Hinckley C. Bet I can't rent it to a senior manager.

[Nigel R]

Few years yet until that's a problem

[Don Fry]

I reckon, it will not produce a watt of power. I reckon, if you cut it up, before the fuel rods get hot, it's a simple demolition job. And a very expensive political problem.

BTW, have a look at the cooling valve open/ shut problem on the Three Mile Island. A couple of thousand dollars of cost cutting, a nuclear plant ruined. And the Japanese, failed to put the backup generators out of reach of the tsunami. Nature reserve created, on a crowded island.

And in fairness, the USA, and Japan produce good engineers. Couldn't spot all the ways that technology will shaft you. It's a wicked technology. I thought it the dog's dodahs when I was a kid.

[Keith Miles 2]

Posted by Percy Verance on 10/07/2019 13:41:34:

Well certainly the days of i.c engind passenger car ownership are numbered. It won't be legal to sell or market them after 2040.......

The final line of your post hints at everyone using public transport? Well that's almost funny. Where I live, in a relatively small rural village, the bus service has all but disappeared. There are just 3 per day. Morning, mid-day and one later, about 5 or 6 o clock. That's it. Public transport is hunky dory when all you need is to get there, but if you want to bring 6 bags of cement or half a dozen 2.1 metre lengths of 3x2 home from the nearest builder's merchant (before you ask, they only deliver trade orders) then you'd be stuffed on a bus because they'd not let you on.

I do find it strange you feel the charging infrastructure will never be sufficient. The majority - 80% - of present electric car owners charge at home. Why might you think this percentage may not stay the same when electric cars begin selling in much greater numbers than at present? Surely most EV owners will carry on home charging?

 

Edited By Percy Verance on 10/07/2019 14:11:00

 

Percy, I really wish that I shared your optimism.

Public transport is, indeed, sadly lacking and for many, even if political aspirations to maximise its coverage were achieved, it would still be inadequate for many of the population. No public transport system will provide an equal or attractive alternative to private vehicle ownership just as electric vehicles will not directly replace all fossil fuelled private vehicles without massive expenditure and a massive change to civil infrastructure which, even then, might not be adequate to serve an equal or increasing number of electric vehicles.

Your 80% home charge figure seems based upon those who are able to home charge and who can afford to buy an electric vehicle. Many current vehicle owners are less fortunate with very low budgets and no off-road parking facility.

The idea of lamp post charging might sound attractive provided that the number of lamp posts in a street of terraced houses or flats is adequate for the number of private vehicle owners living there! Unlikely. Furthermore, any form of charging adjacent to a public pavement (and free of yellow lines!) is likely to raise issues concerning safety, vandalism and maintenance and who would take responsibility for that?

One filling station, however, currently copes easily with, and serves well, an entire surrounding vehicle owning population plus passing visitors without the need for any major and expensive civil engineering redesign or upheaval.

So whilst I accept the imminent demise of current IC vehicles, I maintain that we do not yet have a directly comparable and viable long term alternative and until we do, I can only envisage an enforced overall reduction in personal vehicle ownership due to the numerous “real world” disadvantages of electric power and the expensive and extensive infrastructure needed to adequately support it.

Actually, It is rumoured, apparently, that Tesla are considering moving away from car production to concentrate on battery manufacture and development, including their use for civil power supplies, some of which are already in use.

If true, perhaps Elon Musk is even smarter than we thought?

Edited By Keith Miles 2 on 11/07/2019 01:07:23

[Former Member]

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[Keith Miles 2]

I note, in this thread, no mention of the current practicality (or lack of it) of converting the world’s existing shipping, lorries and public transport (including aircraft) to electric. We rely on those more than we rely on private vehicles and they are probably more important for maintaining our current way of life and preventing a catastrophic breakdown of our current infrastructure.

They say that necessity is the mother of invention but I fear that the current pace of technological advance and a flawed focus (no, not Ford Focus!) on battery power will not provide a suitable solution in a suitable time frame.

Whether we wish to accept it or not, there is currently NO alternative technology to match the convenience, flexibility, availability, practicality or cost of fossil fuelled transport.

There is also no technology that is entirely environmentally or socially friendly either.

Unless that changes within the next 20 years or so, I fear that we may be forced to reduce our consumption of energy ever further and to prioritise its use for essential services.

[jrman]

Don,

I think you will find the design of Fukushima Daichi was carried out by General Electric (USA) who stipulated that the back up generators must be positioned in the basement area in order to reduce pump operating costs An unusual design stipulation I would have thought!

[Nigel R]

Not sure they did. True it was GE design, and one of the creaky first generation boiling water jobs at that. Unit 6 didn't flood and it was used to keep units 5 and 6 cool.

Tepco had known of the badly located backup generators for years, ditto the sea wall providing poor protection, and did nothing. They also refused help from the US who had portable kit ready to fly in and use immediately, if I remember right. Japanese government took a poor stance, closed from outside help or advice, dithered, and made the situation far worse. Tepco didn't have emergency cabling to connect their own batteries to the cooling pumps, connection points were in the basement and liable to flood. And they knew all this. Management ought to be court marshalled, etc.

Despite all this, from all the stuff released during that incident, the local residents had a dose less than a CT scan would give you. And the lasting irony of that incident, is that Japan is now switching to coal, and that switch will kill more people through disease and pollution than continuing the nuclear plant operation would. Money would better have been put into sorting out any other "known issues they didn't bother doing anything about" with their existing plant.

Three mile island did a lot to raise standards within the industry, both design and operation. Lots of the techniques and process, the checks and balances, are common to aviation and medical arenas.

Not everyone signs up to those standards. Russia / China are approaching them these days, I understand.

I realise we're digressing from cars a bit, but you have to charge them up from something...

Edited By Nigel R on 11/07/2019 10:29:13