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Electric Cars.


Cuban8
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On 08/05/2022 at 10:46, Rich Griff said:

I believe there is a company in n mid Wales/Aberystwyth area that does conversions ?

 

But would a convertion to electric change its status tax wise, insurance wise ?

 

Electric motor driving the gear box, so a clutch needed ?

 

 

Once a vehicle is registered petrol,  diesel or whatever that's it for the vehicles life. Even if modified to a lower emissions power plant it will still be taxed at the category it was first registered .Converting a car to electric won't change its  tax status  although your car ,the car in discussion appers to be tax free due to age. Also it will not change its ULEZ status in being allowed into these  zones , beurocracy at its best ? Also the conversion comes with a hefty cost ! Starting from £30k  I believe.

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  • 1 month later...

I’ve been following the Lightyear story for quite a while and it looks as if it may become reality, albeit an expensive one for now. So thought this alternative approach to EV design may be of interest. For reference I am on average achieving 4.2 m/kWhr in the Leaf. YMMV.

 

Lightyear gets closer.

 

Will the technology make its way into a cheaper EV? I Hope so as I’m not a big fan of the mahoosive battery approach.

 

idd

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The French EDF company has given out warnings as it's might have to cut electric to everyone this summer and as a few of the Nuclear power stations are

out of action they are starting up the coal ones, so as GG says what will happen in the winter ?, I can't find anywhere the true French numbers but I did find this,,

 

On estime qu'il y avait, en octobre 2019, plus de 200 000 véhicules électriques en circulation sur les routes françaises. Le parc automobile français dans son ensemble compte 32 millions de voitures particulières

 

 In English it translates to

"200.000 electric cars on the road in October 2019 out of the 32.000.000 on the road,",

and that is only the public, no HGV's or anything else, so where will the electric come from for 32.000.000 cars ?.

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Slight drift but related...

 

Seen on you tube quite a few bus fires, quite spectacular and no doubt terrifying for passengers.

 

Recent iet mag article, hydrogen powered fuel cell to complement battery system...

 

Also government thinking of "lost revenue"  relative to ev 's.

 

Payment by miles driven...increased charges for ev charging electricity, rationing, even charging overnight...

 

The lad reminded me of the current price difference per mile in "fuel" costs...

 

Makes no difference to me as I will never be able to afford an ev, even with my pension now being sorted ( only taken 3 months ) but a lottery win would help.

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The issues with electric vehicles remain although they are morphing, with the time line.

 

As has been noted power generation and distribution remains an issue. The various inter connectors need re-enforcing at a financial and environmental cost. The intermittency with respect to generation remains with the wind turbines, the rated capability relative to average output remains large. Again there is another cost implication related to head room necessary.

 

It seems we need Nuclear power for effective base load capacity.

 

The issue of rapid ramp up remains, how, what, at what cost, will it be green.

 

Then the Treasury has more than indicated that it wants to charge all road vehicles per mile, irrespective of power type. Whilst another department has indicated that private vehicles need to be reduced to control emissions from tyres, brakes and oils in addition the social impact of large numbers of the community causing congestion (I assume we will all need to stay in our rooms like battery hens. 

 

Now it appears some are claiming that wind turbines are anything but green, for a variety of reasons, using a cradle to grave methodology.

 

The future seems miserable even if you can just afford that £50, 000 pound EV, as your pockets are emptied by various charges.

 

 

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This chap should know if there’s going to be enough electrons to go around…

 

Chris Harris talks electricity

 

 

In respect of the Lightyear in winter, then yes you would be charging it more frequently then in the summer. But it would still be using those electrons 3 times more efficiently than some of the heavyweight vehicles from the “premium” brands. The whole point of the Lightyear and it’s attention to detail is to do a lot more with less, so less battery, less weight, less electricity. At the moment the design trend from the traditional car makers appears to be “just chuck a bigger battery in it”.

 

A second super efficient vehicle called the APTERA is supposedly close to production in the USA. However, it has had a somewhat “checkered” history so I’m not so sure. It is also pretty radical in terms of looks so may not be accepted by the market, but that is a difficult call to make.

 

idd

 

 

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8 minutes ago, Paul De Tourtoulon said:

I have only watched 2 minutes of the video that I will eventually watch in full,

So if I understand it you need to live in a house where you can park you car on your property and charge it at night,

so where will all the people who don't come under that category charge their cars?,

here's one option https://www.ubitricity.com/charge-points-uk/ but looking at fossil fueled cars, there was one village in Cumbria that bought their local petrol station to ensure they could buy fuel locally as it was about to shut and they were faced with a 20 mile journey to the nearest filling station, as non fossil fueled vehicles become more mainstream then the need for filling stations decreases too.

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1 hour ago, Frank Skilbeck said:

here's one option https://www.ubitricity.com/charge-points-uk/ but looking at fossil fueled cars, there was one village in Cumbria that bought their local petrol station to ensure they could buy fuel locally as it was about to shut and they were faced with a 20 mile journey to the nearest filling station, as non fossil fueled vehicles become more mainstream then the need for filling stations decreases too.

Looking at the queues at the petrol stations today the nearest one to me has 8 pumps with each one takes around 4 minutes to fill a tank, with a queue

of around 20+ cars, now work out how many charge points at 1 hour to charge an EV how many pumps will you need,,,?

Edited by Paul De Tourtoulon
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1 hour ago, Paul De Tourtoulon said:

Looking at the queues at the petrol stations today the nearest one to me has 8 pumps with each one takes around 4 minutes to fill a tank, with a queue

of around 20+ cars, now work out how many charge points at 1 hour to charge an EV how many pumps will you need,,,?

Yep, but looking out of our bedroom window on our housing estate in a rural small town I can see 4 lampposts.

 

It won't come overnight, but as the market and demand changes it will come. Lampposts are one thing, but if you go down the local docks near me there are numerous power points for all the boats that are moored there (some just overnight)

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2 hours ago, Zflyer said:

At least the birds wont go hungry with the global worming. Apologises Paul my speeling isnt that grate ither.

I had just woken up and like the birds had an early breakfast, being originally from Sowfend doesn't help,,?

 

 Ps I don't have an edit option on that message just Share and report,,

Edited by Paul De Tourtoulon
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Electric vehicles may appear 'green' to us but a quick search of the internet as to how Cobalt is mined for Lithium batteries makes for some pretty distressing reading.

Not just electric cars of course but all electronics, including the laptop I'm typing this on.

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-tuesday-edition-1.5399491/tech-giants-sued-over-appalling-deaths-of-children-who-mine-their-cobalt-1.5399492

 

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/may/06/pollution-causing-birth-defects-in-children-of-drc-cobalt-miners-study

 

Very disturbing when I'm confronted with adverts asking for £2 a month to fund operations for children with hair lip or cleft palate.

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1 hour ago, Geoff Copping said:

Electric vehicles may appear 'green' to us but a quick search of the internet as to how Cobalt is mined for Lithium batteries makes for some pretty distressing reading.

Not just electric cars of course but all electronics, including the laptop I'm typing this on.

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-tuesday-edition-1.5399491/tech-giants-sued-over-appalling-deaths-of-children-who-mine-their-cobalt-1.5399492

 

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/may/06/pollution-causing-birth-defects-in-children-of-drc-cobalt-miners-study

 

Very disturbing when I'm confronted with adverts asking for £2 a month to fund operations for children with hair lip or cleft palate.

Yes an EV uses some cobalt but by far the biggest use of cobalt is for the desulphurisation of petrol and diesel fuels.

 

Cobalt Institute

 

Strangely “Big Oil” never seems to come up in this argument…

 

There have been a number of initiatives to reduce “child labour” including legislation in Europe, the USA and China which hopefully will reduce the problem, but in all probability will not eliminate it.

 

There is also huge investment going on for reducing the need for the likes of cobalt in the production of EV batteries and other components. For example:
 

Tesla Cobalt Free LFP batteries


I guess the best we can do as individual consumers is ensure we buy from “certified “ sources and always recycle as best we can.

 

idd

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

As a follow up to the Lightyear super efficient car above Mercedes have a development vehicle that has achieved quite staggering levels of efficiency as can be seen from this video. To put it into a bit of context if my Leaf were as efficient as this vehicle I'd be doubling its effective range, and 300 miles is way beyond my comfort capacity! 😀

 

I'll take this as a positive sign (optimistic?) that Mercedes are going to move away from the "bung a bigger battery in it" design approach that does tend to characterise their current line up of EV's IMHO.

 

Mercedes EQXX

 

idd

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Interesting report on how charging infrastructure is improving all the time in the UK. 

 

ZAP Map Half year charging report

 

Having just done a 650 mile road trip to the North East without any "charging issues" I'd agree things are starting to look quite good for EV's there.

 

With the SMMT reporting that there are nearly 1M cars on the road with a plug (500,000 BEV and 400,000 PHEV) demand is going to keep rising and solutions such as the new large charging hub at Oxford are welcome news. More local charging facilities are also starting to roll out at a pace now with both Cornwall and Gloucestershire councils significant numbers of chargers as just two recent examples.

 

idd

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 13/05/2022 at 12:12, Gary Manuel said:

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that Solar Panels don't make sense. I just couldn't justify it at the time. Circumstances have changed and I'm continually weighing up the pros and cons. The thing that would swing it for me is if the government did what they should do (needs to do?) in order to reach their CO2 targets and offered financial incentives. Half price solar panels anyone?

 

Never say Never.

I've just signed up for a 4000KWh/y Solar Panel / 9.5KWh Storage Battery installation.

With the next rise in the energy cap prices, I have calculated my pay-back time as 7.5 years.

With future addition of a second 9.5KWh battery assuming I can get onto Octupus GO tarif (7.5p per unit for 4 hours at night), the payback time reduces to 4.9 years. The question mark about Octopus GO is that it requires Electric Car ownership, which I'm not quite ready for.

Edited by Gary Manuel
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