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Electric Cars.


Cuban8
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EV would be a real problem for us.  No street lights that can  be adapted for charging, and no new street lights allowed on our conservation area.  No off road parking - a charge lead would need to go across the only footpath, then across a 15' grass bank. Nearest supermarket with charge points currently 9 miles away (there is a Costa to sit in); nearest garage 6 miles away in another small village with no other distractions.

 

Not insurmountable, but makes it far less practical than filling up in under 5 mins........ I suspect we'll eventually be forced to bite the bullet, or stop driving - and flying.

 

As for LiPo safety, they are fine unless mistreated (e.g. incorrect charge regime, or crash).  Bit like Jets I suppose, although they occasionally have 'wet starts' as well as crashes.  And often contain multiple Lithium based batteries.  I have personally suffered 3 LiPo fires - 2 from charging issues and one crash. Never had a petrol or glow plane fire. Never owned a jet ..... too 'tight' and our field is not really suitable!

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Hi Rich, yes, I believe it's genuine.

The four hour charging period puts 40% into the battery which equates, roughly, to 100 miles.  It does vary quite a bit though and you get more miles/kWh in summer than you do in winter. 

It's a 7kW charger, from Pod Point.

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Thanks Tim.

 

The lad has about a total 35 mile commute to work and back, sometimes more if he has to go to a different "station" whilst at work, and to pick her up when she gets pevved waiting an hour for her bus.

 

They have private off street parking and could exploit 2 south facing roofs for solar, so an ev would work for them, for the vast majority of needs.

 

An ev could work for us also, similar "property", but, a holiday trip ( remember them ! ) to the SE, some 260 miles away, would need real planning. In the diesel pug, we just go (60 + mpg on a long trip ) and top up the tank if needed.

 

Only thing needed ( apart from 100,000 or more charge points, off peak, some charge point luck, and a "Genny"  ) is money.

 

Guilty, 100,000 is FUD, more like a million needed 24/7/365....do charge points need a day off ?

 

Perhaps "ev battery exchange points" for refueling ?

 

An "ev 1 gallon range" spare battery pack, like a gallon container in the back of the car ( rentable ? ) as a safeguard for those long journeys...as long as a crane is not needed to lift it in the car and a suitable very close "plug in point"  is fitted. The luggage can go on the roof.

 

You can just imaging the charge point arguments...."I was here first ! ".       "Jog on, I was here first !!! " Etc....

 

Much more work needs to be done such as Standardisation...

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Just to round off yesterday’s topic (which seems already to be two pages back!!) we went to the Fully Charged Show today. Arriving just after 11am, there was no queuing to park (at the Rushmoor overflow), the bus service was excellent and no queue either for registration. The show felt well attended but not crowded and, in spite of some worrying forecasts, there was no serious rain, just occasional light drizzle.

 

I enjoyed the show but still can see no sign of anything electric on the horizon to replace my Kia Sorento as a rough track-capable model aircraft transporter.

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2 hours ago, Don Fry said:

For the older brethren here, FUD is an abbreviation for 

 

Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. Just looked it up. Thank you Rich for todays learning opportunity.

It means something totally different in Scotland by the way, such that it would be instantly deleted by a moderator!  My pals daughter was provided for her work (a midwife) with a car with FUD registration  and instantly sent it back to the (English) lease company as it was inappropriate . The first letters were BG which made iT worse! 

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2 hours ago, EarlyBird said:

I was looking at this, which will do as a rough track model transporter.

 

image.thumb.png.37c182d3ece99431501b08c827505331.png

But Yes that's a big but

From £70,035 ?

And even for £70k, it doesn’t look as if it will take a 2m wing behind the driver’s seat ?

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31 minutes ago, Frank Skilbeck said:

Or the Ford Pinto as well.

I didn't realise that the Pinto situation was so bad, seems based on the same policy of death & injury compensation is cheaper than recalls.

IIRC due to the Mustang outrage a lawyer called (Ralph?) Nader initiated a campaign that has led to the very high amounts of  compensation claimed (& often awarded) by US courts dealing with accidental injury & death cases that's prevalent today.    

 

I once oversaw installation then maintained a very expensive early processor controlled telephone exchange system that was produced by a large US company. The room it was housed in had automatic CO2 flooding fire extinguisher protection that was designed to operate immediately a fire was detected, at he same time an audible alarm sounded. As designed anyone in the room would have been disorientated by the noise of the gas & dust cloud created, if the doors were closed they would have had little chance of exiting before being overcome by the CO2.

We discovered from our customer, the company buying the system, that the insurers had costed the compensation likely to be claimed for up to a specific number of lives lost against cost of fire damage to the equipment & interruption of service. (If any of the US company employees were included the break even number of lives would have been fewer against fire damage, even though they were not US citizens) 

Our customer insisted that the operation sequence was changed to : audible alarm, then auto CO2 flooding after the doors had been opened (if they were not already), then doors closed, followed by about 30 secs delay.    

We did a couple of trial runs using compressed air instead of CO2 &, even though we'd been warned what to expect, the noise and dust really was disorientating, far worse than we imagined.  

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8 hours ago, Trevor said:

And even for £70k, it doesn’t look as if it will take a 2m wing behind the driver’s seat ?

It will. The EQC has the same footprint as the C200 estate which will take an eight foot wing, just. 

 

The EQA is similarly based on the A class which did look too small for my bigger models.

 

Steve

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18 hours ago, Tim Kearsley said:

I doubt the shutting down of peak hours charging will bother that many EV owners.  Like most I suspect, I charge my car on an off-peak "cheap" rate.  In my case,  it's between 0030 and 0430 and it costs me 5p per kWh at the moment.  It works out at about 1.5p per mile, which is one of several reasons I love my electric car!

Any idea how much it might be worth in say eight to ten years time.........see my original posting that started this thread.

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48 minutes ago, Cuban8 said:

 

Any idea how much it might be worth in say eight to ten years time.........see my original posting that started this thread.

 

Nobody knows of course.

 

But 8 year old Nissan Leafs & Renault Zoes are being advertised at £7K-£9K and BMW i£s for about £12k right now.

 

For interest:

 

image.thumb.png.d031d974fdd73d446144c8b2fefda253.png

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Electric vehicles haven't really been around long enough to get meaningful data.  There are Tesla Model S that are being used in the USA as taxis which have done 500,000 miles on the same battery.  My Model 3 is about 18 months old and similar cars of similar mileage are on sale on the Autotrader website for about the same or a little more as I paid brand new in September 2020.  As for the battery catching fire, well I thought we'd covered that one.  Some people don't like facts it seems. 

Edited by Tim Kearsley
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"give us an real estimation for an electric car in that size, age and mileage,,,"

 

As I said nobody knows.

 

There are far too may unknown variables. Politicial, technological, environmental, world events etc etc . Plus the 'unknown unknowns'.

 

And you can't take an individual experience and extrapolate it to a generalisation. Some cars never make it off the transporter from the factory, others are running after 100 years. The 14 years quoted is, I believe, from the 2021 UK SMMT (Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders) 2021 Automotive Sustainability Report.

Edited by John Lee
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Last month a whole lot of mostly expensive cars both IC and battery went to the bottom of the Atlantic off the Azores. Transport ship having first burnt out over several days.

Also on board were several very high value special cars belonging to film star's ect. 

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12 hours ago, Cuban8 said:

 

Any idea how much it might be worth in say eight to ten years time.........see my original posting that started this thread.

 

If you want a predictable second hand value in 8-10 years time, you'd better not buy any car younger than ~5 years old in the next 8-10 years! We are about to go through the biggest sea change in personal transportation since Henry Ford started churning them out, so predictablility is going to be in short supply. Criticising EVs based on uncertainty as to their secondhand value or the rising price of electricity is completely pointless given the future values of IC cars and cost of their fuel in that timeframe are just as if not more uncertain.

 

Personally having done a lot of personal research into EVs in the last 9 months or so I am comfortable that anything bought today that has a sticker range of >200 miles at point of purchase will have decent resale within the time period I would run it for. This is primarily due to shortage of supply vs global demand in the medium terms, and the inevitable governemental push towards zero tailpipe emissions in coming years as IC is phased out. Feel free to disagree, but absolutely no-one can predict what is going to happen to car values in the next 10 years, so I wouldn't waste too much time hypothesising about it - just buy (or retain) the vehicle you believe is right for you and the planet now. 

 

Edited by MattyB
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