Dyson to make electric cars !

[Titan]

As someone who only boasts an O level in physics, I may be a tad out of my depth here, but why can't the battery be integrated into the chassis and structure of a vehicle, does it have to be one bleedin' great lump?

 

Mike.

 

Who told you they were not?

 

I believe the Tesla, and possibly others, have the batteries spread out under the entire floor of the vehicle. This not only frees up considerable interior space, but all that weight low down gives it a very low center of gravity, which results in superb handling. There is a limit to how much you can integrate them though, since batteries are far from a fit and forget item at this stage of technological development and will need to be able to be replaced if required.

[Guest]

It's about "brake blend" between regen and mechanical, and the way I'm reading the Leaf specification (please tell me I'm reading it wrongly), one has to tell it to maximise regen within the blend.

 

The Leaf always prefers regen when you press the brake pedal. What you can configure is what happens when you lift off the throttle. That's where you want to change things by situation. Sometimes you want to coast. Sometimes you want to stop. The Hyundai Ioniq has flappy paddles on the steering wheel to turn it up & down. The Leaf only gives you something akin to dropping down the gearbox.

 

Being able to control your speed solely with the throttle is lovely and is the main thing I miss when going back to an ICE. It's more of an impact than having a clutch again.

[ejstubbs]

 You dismiss Dyson without any knowledge of his intentions and promote the automotive manufacturers as the leaders of innovation.   eeeerrrrr Elon Musk....the founder of Paypal, no experience beforehand but saw an opportunity.

 

Dyson is not just a vacuum company, it is a company that makes products and employs engineers to work on solutions, some of which are battery related.

 

Auto companies make products as well as a collection of engineers who work on things such as batteries....

 

You seem to have completely overlooked the fact that I was not talking about product innovation, but about providing the impetus for a "wide-ranging behavioural and infrastructural revolution" (my exact words).  And I said he had no track record of doing that - please provide evidence to the contrary if you have any - while the automotive manufacturers arguably do, based on what they've done in the past that was very little to do with the physical product and a lot to do with changing the way that people bought them.  They have shown in the past that they can think beyond the product itself.  I haven't seen that from Dyson to date.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/29/dyson-electric-car-project-industry-experts-2020-engineering-manufacturing-regulatory-hurdles

 

And I didn't say that the automotive engineers are the only ones innovating, which is what you seem to be trying to imply.  I said they have a stronger track record for innovating in areas beyond just the product.  You mention Elon Musk and I would actually agree that, although a lot of people focus purely on the physical hardware his company sells (still without making a profit to date, BTW), he does seem to have a broader vision for what the world could be like several years in the future.  I don't believe that he's in the game just to sell cars with batteries and electric motors instead of tanks of liquid hydrocarbon fuel and ICE engines.  He's got other things in mind.  I'm not convinced from what I've seen and heard from Dyson so far that he is aiming to do anything more than create a better electric car - and it seems to me that in doing that he may find himself fighting battles that no longer need to be fought, against competitors who are already planning to move the battlefield completely elsewhere.

[Nearholmer]

Yes, Titan.

 

I had a crawl around a Tesla that was on display locally, and the main thing that impressed me was how the battery was located, below/in the floor, and fairly easily removable.

 

Other things might be equally impressive, but the two young guys given the job of promoting the vehicle hadn't the faintest about its technical features, so I don't know!

 

The least impressive thing to me was its conventional-car-likeness, but I suspect that might be about not frightening conservative buyers away with too much overt, as opposed to covert, novelty, and that the "body" could easily be re-shaped, while retaining the essentials below.

 

K

Edited September 29, 2017 by Nearholmer

[raymw]

Tesla has been experimenting with automatically changing the battery. i.e., when battery nearly flat, you drive over a hatch in the service station, the battery is removed, and replaced by a fully charged unit in under 20 seconds, and a cost of $50.00 iirc. cheaper and quicker than refueling a conventional car was the idea.

[admiles]

That is changing fast. And when you include queuing to pay at the till a refill for a petrol/diesel is very difficult to do in under 10 minutes, that is from leaving the motorway to joining again. An 80% charge, can be done in under 20 minutes and take most evs over 100 miles. Which is just enough time to have a cup of tea while you wait - something you can't do whilst refueling a petrol/diesel.

 

Stopping for 20 mins to recharge every 100 miles is exactly why I didn't end up buying an EV despite having two demonstrators. They're simply not practical for

a lot of people. Not to mention horribly unreliable.  The fact that the town where I work has only a single charging point also doesn't exactly endear then to me either!

Edited September 29, 2017 by admiles

[MJI]

Lady Ava

 

I'd be confident that it will be solved, because there's money to be made by solving it.

 

One model that could be used is to change from the concept of owning a battery, or leasing one, to the concept of buying "charged capacity". One might rock up at a battery changing station, rack out one set, and rack in another. But, I have no idea whether that is on the cards, and it clearly has potential downsides, as well as potential advantages.

 

The other thought being that regular long distance drivers will be the last adopters ....... but a huge majority of trips are short, and perfectly suited to EV, even at the current state of technology.

 

The question that gets me is how to acts if one drives short trips 350 days a year, but uses the car for occasional long trips ........ buy an EV and forget long trips? Hire a diesel for the long trips? Use the train, and forget places that aren't on the railway? Makes me think that lifestyle changes are needed too.

 

Kevin

 

Use an older second car just for long trips, keep them away from road salt and should last until technology catches up.

Has someone already done the - "will it hoover the road as it travels along" joke ??

 

For my part - I hope it's a giant failure !!

 

I am probably flawed in  my thinking cos I didn't think too hard about it at the time - but I have boycotted Dyson products since they simpy closed their factory in this country some years ago and upped sticks to some cheaper exploitative rice consuming part of the far-east - in much the same way that I no longer eat Cadbury products since they f*cked the workers at Keynsham after promising them their jobs would be ok after the Kraft takeover - B*astards !!!

 

Not very sophisticated logic but then I'm not .......................

 

Ended up closing as he could not get planning permission for a bigger factory

[Guest]

Not to mention horribly unreliable.

 

I what way? Taxi companies love 'em.

 

https://twitter.com/candctaxis/status/821651868862545921?lang=en

[298]

Stopping for 20 mins to recharge every 100 miles is exactly why I didn't end up buying an EV despite having two demonstrators.

 

The fact that the town where I work has only a single charging point also doesn't exactly endear then to me either!

We have to stop every 100 miles to drain and refuel the kids. And don't make me go and check whether the charging point next to our front door is still there...

 

Tesla has been experimenting with automatically changing the battery. i.e., when battery nearly flat, you drive over a hatch in the service station, the battery is removed, and replaced by a fully charged unit in under 20 seconds, and a cost of $50.00 iirc. cheaper and quicker than refueling a conventional car was the idea.

That was the idea with the Renault Fluence five years ago, and the basis for the Renault lease battery scheme.

 

 

All this talk of "EVs not suiting me" and "what if I need to drive 100 miles in an emergency" has got me paranoid, and I'm now trying to keep my phone 100% charged, 'just in case'....

[runs as required]

Anybody else read a really fascinating book called "Life 3.0; being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence" ? (grandson got it for his school Theology prize!)

It has a very thought provoking diagram about the inevitability of the onward surge of A.I.

A geek called Moravec has copyright of a diagram (which is why I can't post it) showing a landscape with peaks of art attainment (Leonardo) and science (Newton). Then there are uplands of creative thinking: book writing etc., then ordinary kinds of activities distributed across the foothills. There are lowlands labelled driving and distribution, armed services, education, healthcare etc.

The coastline is a rising tide of A.I.about to flood over the lowland.; beneath the water can be seen drowned activities like clerks and bank tellers.

The challenge facing a young person is to try to judge where to choose to settle that may be safe!

 

The wider argument of the whole book is should we attempt to draw the line internationally - rather like the Geneva Convention does on Chemical Warfare - and how long may we have to do this.

I imagine this is what Dyson is attempting to engage in - along with Elon Musk.

Scary !

[Nearholmer]

Given that rather a lot of 'land' has already been submerged by technology in the past 200 years, and the rate of rise of the tide seems to be increasing (that may be an illusion) then the thesis sounds about right ....... our future might be as the "wetware" face of our own technologies.

[Ozexpatriate]

I imagine this is what Dyson is attempting to engage in - along with Elon Musk.

The highest profile 'tech' opponent to AI is Elon Musk.

 

AI and automation are different things.

 

Autonomous vehicles are an automation function and are distinct from true AI. They really do only one thing and while more complex and possibly dangerous are not much different from dishwashers in terms of their 'intelligence'.

 

"Deep learning" is the big AI buzzword today.

 

There are AI systems that have developed their own programming languages - for the use not by humans but the machines themselves.

[APOLLO]

 

Anyway, THIS is the fuel of the future !!!!

 

 

Brit15

[jjb1970]

No, he's not ******g into the tank to re-fuel, he's topping up the SCR reductant (urea).

[298]

The Leaf has no temperature management of the battery.

I stand corrected, I knew the ENV200 had battery conditioning, and assumed the Leaf was the same.

 

Being able to control your speed solely with the throttle is lovely and is the main thing I miss when going back to an ICE. It's more of an impact than having a clutch again.

The driving "Advice" from a Zoe salesman has largely been ignored now (steady up hills, accelerate down, lift off early) as it rarely suits modern traffic conditions, ie having an Audi up your nonexistent tail pipe. When it's quiet it is possible not to use the brakes until the last few seconds to stop from a crawl, but having been blamed by a dealer for not using the brakes enough on our ice car, I now have a habit of standing on the anchors every now and then.

 

I also tend to drive the commute or local runs with the speed limiter on, and its surprising how many times the Zoe will regen, even though it is set up more like a conventional car than a Leaf.

[brack]

With electric car development, and the car manufacturers dream of making us all renter's rather than owners (I suspect a part of their enthusiasm for batteries rather than getting on with the rather better solution offered by hydrogen - yes your battery will only last 3-4 years, but you can rent it off us for a small monthly payment, and I bet nobody else will be allowed to supply one but the manufacturer). We do seem to be missing a trick - there's been an arm's race in terms of power, mass and safety features for decades, and now all cars are big, heavy and wide. What is really needed for the average commute is bigger version of the peel p50 powered by a fuel cell, limited to 75mph and available for £5k. Except nobody will dare drive such a thing with all the unnecessary SUVs, transits and lorries on our roads (hence the Sinclair C5 failure). If we deescalate the size/mass arm's race there'd be lower energy requirements, lower energy involved in collisions, and people with garages built pre 2000 might be able to fit a car in there. If a government wanted to be creative about emissions reduction they could do this in tandem with mandating a long distance HGV ban, forcing containerised traffic to flow via rails to local distribution points. Maybe even electrify our lines as well (the ecml lights go off if you try to run freight on it as they were too tight to do it properly)?

[royaloak]

We have to stop every 100 miles to drain and refuel the kids. And don't make me go and check whether the charging point next to our front door is still there...

 

 

That was the idea with the Renault Fluence five years ago, and the basis for the Renault lease battery scheme.

 

 

All this talk of "EVs not suiting me" and "what if I need to drive 100 miles in an emergency" has got me paranoid, and I'm now trying to keep my phone 100% charged, 'just in case'....

Buy a car charger. 

[Guest]

yes your battery will only last 3-4 years,

Tesla & Nissan have an eight year battery warranty.

[Nearholmer]

Brack

 

It would appear that we already are a nation of renters when it comes to new cars. About 90% seem to be "sold" on personal contract plans, and most of the rest on old-fashioned loans, so much so that the governor of the Bank of England keeps issuing warnings that the whole business amounts to near-reckless lending. A very high percentage of off-Pcp cars then sell secondhand under old-fashioned loans.

 

We probably don't realise it, but we're well on the way to the model of "buying mobility as a service"; young people certainly aren't anything like as keen on buying cars, even when they can afford to, as previous generations.

 

Kevin

[Mark Saunders]

Brack

 

It would appear that we already are a nation of renters when it comes to new cars. About 90% seem to be "sold" on personal contract plans, and most of the rest on old-fashioned loans, so much so that the governor of the Bank of England keeps issuing warnings that the whole business amounts to near-reckless lending. A very high percentage of off-Pcp cars then sell secondhand under old-fashioned loans.

 

We probably don't realise it, but we're well on the way to the model of "buying mobility as a service"; young people certainly aren't anything like as keen on buying cars, even when they can afford to, as previous generations.

 

Kevin

 

We already have a Railway based on the above as most rolling stock is Leased!

 

Mark Saunders

[brack]

Trouble with renting everything is what happens to those who retire? I know the government is working on never allowing that to come to pass for my age group, but a pension is unlikely to cover the cost of renting either a house or vehicle.

[chris p bacon]

We probably don't realise it, but we're well on the way to the model of "buying mobility as a service"; young people certainly aren't anything like as keen on buying cars, even when they can afford to, as previous generations.

 

Kevin

 

They don't need to buy them. A short distance from me is a 24 year old girl working part time, she walked out of the showroom with an Audi Q7,  must be £40k+.  I'm sure the salesman got quite a commission off that pile of debt he passed on.

[BG John]

she walked out of the showroom with an Audi Q7

Wow, that's some intelligent car! My dog likes to follow me everywhere I walk, but I didn't realise cars could do it too .

[jjb1970]

Unfortunately, very few people want to be told, and politicians don't have the cajones to be the message bearer, that you can't have everything in life and we're not as rich as we like to think we are and that limitless credit does not create limitless wealth. The latest wheeze to avoid these truths (I almost inserted "uncomfortable" but I see nothing at all uncomfortable about them) is to imagine that we can now replace continuous asset inflation fuelled cheap credit with unlimited government spending fuelled by state access to a never ending supply of money.

[Horsetan]

.... imagine that we can now replace continuous asset inflation fuelled cheap credit with unlimited government spending fuelled by state access to a never ending supply of money.

Sorry, did someone mention a magic money tree.....?