Electric, Hybrid and Alternative fuelled vehicles - News and Discussion

[Guest]

16 minutes ago, boxbrownie said:

Tell her to stick her left foot under her right leg so she cannot move it easily..........it works and she will soon get used to it, we taught that to employees who said they could NEVER drive auto......took about 30 minutes.

 

Never had any issue with the lack of a clutch because there is no engine noise. You don't have that engine-note cue  that says 'change gear'.

You also get much finer engine braking via regen.

[Talltim]

The Toyota Auris Hybrid we have as a pool car is the first non-manual car I’ve driven. Apart from being ridiculously complicated and non-intuitive to start (it took me about 10 minutes the first time!) I’ve not found it hard to drive. What is annoying is having to select reverse when doing a three point turn on a slope, in a manual you’d leave it 1st and use the clutch to roll back. 

(Why do you move the selector forwards for reverse and back for forwards?)

I’m not sure it’s any better than a plain IC tho, the engine always seems to be going so it’s more like a petrol electric. Plus on the motorway the little three cylinder engine revs away like the clutch is slipping

[davefromacrossthepond]

Not sure if there is a British equivalent, but my wife just got herself a Toyota Rav4 hybrid.  She loves it.  Has more "oomph" than a gas model and she's registering about 50 percent more miles per gallon than her previous gas Rav4.  In doing the math, the increased mileage will pay for the higher price of the hybrid in about a year and a half.  Of course . . bottom line is that she loves it.

[Guest]

Generally the Leaf insists you have your foot on the brake to put it into drive. However I've noticed if you are going slowly you don't  have to do this going from drive to reverse and back. Means you can do quite a nifty three point turn without ever stopping.

[faulcon1]

Here's my two pence worth. Living in Australia where driving is a necessity for public transport is woeful EV's aren't really an option here. The ICE rules supreme. Range anxiety to me isn't that much of a problem in the UK because towns are so close together. Whereas here in Australia it's sometimes several hundred kilometers between major centers of population. In the capital cities of states yes an EV is worthwhile if you have the money but out in the country at the present time definitely not. EV's in Australia are expensive, depreciate rapidly and when you sell it you have to remove the battery pack and the new owner has to buy a new battery pack and they aren't cheap. Only recently Tesla has been sending updates to it's cars via WiFi and they've been more of a down date than an update reducing battery range to extend the life of the battery. Some Tesla owners are disconnecting the WiFi so Tesla can't update or down date software in their cars.

As for hydrogen like batteries which in the beginning had a very limited range hydrogen will improve in time and I think in the future a tank of compressed hydrogen will give the driver the same range as a tank of diesel. People go on about the environment when it comes to producing hydrogen but these same people don't seem to worry at all about the environment when it comes to producing petrol and diesel. That's just producing not consuming. By the way driving an EV is not saving the environment as most of the charging comes from coal fired power stations and the batteries themselves contain some very nasty chemicals and don't be shocked if used battery packs end up in landfill for it's the cheapest way to get rid of them. Recycling costs a lot of money and for many is not cost effective. 

In China they have battery powered motorbikes using lead acid and lithium batteries and the lead acid bikes are cheaper than a lithium powered bike. But once the lead acid battery can't be charged it's discarded at the roadside and a new battery is bought. Is that environmentally friendly?.    

[Guest]

13 minutes ago, faulcon1 said:

By the way driving an EV is not saving the environment as most of the charging comes from coal fired power stations and the batteries themselves contain some very nasty chemicals and don't be shocked if used battery packs end up in landfill for it's the cheapest way to get rid of them. Recycling costs a lot of money and for many is not cost effective. 

 

Absolute nonsense. Firstly even on electricity produced from the worst coal fired power stations an EV produces about 80% of the co2 of a diesel. And chucking battery packs into landfill? Do you know how much they are worth? Even degraded. You live in Australia, land of the gaffer-taped electricity grid and biggest grid storage battery in the world. Reuse in grid storage is where old EV batteries go.

[boxbrownie]

1 hour ago, faulcon1 said:

By the way driving an EV is not saving the environment as most of the charging comes from coal fired power stations and the batteries themselves contain some very nasty chemicals and don't be shocked if used battery packs end up in landfill for it's the cheapest way to get rid of them. Recycling costs a lot of money and for many is not cost effective. 

 

 

 

Typical uninformed tosh......usually read in the comments section of the Daily Wail 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 16, 2019 by boxbrownie

[boxbrownie]

11 hours ago, 30801 said:

Generally the Leaf insists you have your foot on the brake to put it into drive. However I've noticed if you are going slowly you don't  have to do this going from drive to reverse and back. Means you can do quite a nifty three point turn without ever stopping.

Same in the i3........nice and slick and no jolt like can happen if done in a conventional auto......

[Jol Wilkinson]

1 hour ago, 30801 said:

 

Absolute nonsense. Firstly even on electricity produced from the worst coal fired power stations an EV produces about 80% of the co2 of a diesel. And chucking battery packs into landfill? Do you know how much they are worth? Even degraded. You live in Australia, land of the gaffer-taped electricity grid and biggest grid storage battery in the world. Reuse in grid storage is where old EV batteries go.

I think caution is needed when throwing about figures debating the merits or otherwise of different fuel types forreduced emissions.

 

For example, one source on the web quotes figures of Kg/kwh for co2 of .25 for diesel, .24 for petrol and .29 for "grid" electricity. Diesels  produce less co2 than petrol engines, but the data is usually quoted in Kg/km so comparisons with electric or hybrid cars is not so easy (although I expect someone on here will produce  some definitive data).

 

One thing I would like explained is how PHEV hybrids are said to be significantly more economical than their petrol equivalents. The energy used to propel the vehicle is the same, so unless some of it is derived from charging the battery pack externally, where is the saving in petrol usage coming from? From my school day and engineering student days, I learned that converting energy from one form to another usually incurred some losses, so charging the battery by the petrol engine and then using that to power the car should be less efficient than just using the petrol engine. Transmission losses may be less, but surely not to the the extent of the increase in efficiency that some people are claiming.

[Talltim]

Really the answer is to do less travelling. Although alternative fuels may be more efficient, they still use more energy than we can sustain.  It requires far more joined up thinking individually, nationally and internationally than we seem to be able to manage.

[MPR]

12 minutes ago, Jol Wilkinson said:

I think caution is needed when throwing about figures debating the merits or otherwise of different fuel types forreduced emissions.

 

For example, one source on the web quotes figures of Kg/kwh for co2 of .25 for diesel, .24 for petrol and .29 for "grid" electricity.

 

One thing I would like explained is how PHEV hybrids are said to be significantly more economical than their petrol equivalents. The energy used to propel the vehicle is the same, so unless some of it is derived from charging the battery pack externally, where is the saving in petrol usage coming from? 

A very useful (if now slightly out of date) primer on all aspects of energy generation and utilisation can be found at

http://www.withouthotair.com/Contents.html

 

The comment about caution is well-founded, as whole life-cycle budgets are more complex than just considering mpg (or kw.hr/100km.

 

With regards to PHEV’s, there are two main areas where better efficiency can be obtained, the first is the same as non-plug-in hybrids, where the system is optimised by running the petrol engine in a lower (and maybe more efficient) throttle setting under acceleration - with additional contribution coming from the traction motor, which in turn is fed from the battery, charged by harvesting energy under regenerative braking. Even with poor overall efficiency, this is better than using this energy to heat your brake pads!

The other area relates to the assumption that users will plug-in and recharge over-night. This gives a standard test cycle which (roughly) says “first 25 miles each day as an EV, remaining miles under (hybrid) petrol.”

The actual g.CO2/km figure is then dependent on your source of electricity. At one extreme, where you are on nights, recharge during the day from home solar panels, and drive 10 miles to work, it could be very close to zero. At the other (and perhaps more realistic) end, where you can’t be bothered to plug in and have a 80 mile motorway commute, the hybrid drive train will be almost useless.

[Titan]

43 minutes ago, Jol Wilkinson said:

I

One thing I would like explained is how PHEV hybrids are said to be significantly more economical than their petrol equivalents. The energy used to propel the vehicle is the same, so unless some of it is derived from charging the battery pack externally, where is the saving in petrol usage coming from? From my school day and engineering student days, I learned that converting energy from one form to another usually incurred some losses, so charging the battery by the petrol engine and then using that to power the car should be less efficient than just using the petrol engine. Transmission losses may be less, but surely not to the the extent of the increase in efficiency that some people are claiming.

 

Hybrids and plug in hybrids don't use the engine to charge the batteries, they recharge every time you slow down, i.e. every time you slow down you use the energy to recharge the battery instead of heating up the brake discs. That is where the "extra" energy comes from.

[PatB]

1 hour ago, boxbrownie said:

 

 

Typical uninformed tosh......usually read in the comments section of the Daily Wail 

 

 

 

 

 

But fairly typical of the Australian view of EVs. Which explains why we are where we are on this side of the world. 

[Guest]

27 minutes ago, Titan said:

 

Hybrids and plug in hybrids don't use the engine to charge the batteries, they recharge every time you slow down, i.e. every time you slow down you use the energy to recharge the battery instead of heating up the brake discs. That is where the "extra" energy comes from.

 

They do also use the engine to charge the batteries. All in a manner which the software decides is most efficient.

[admiles]

18 hours ago, boxbrownie said:

Tell her to stick her left foot under her right leg so she cannot move it easily..........it works and she will soon get used to it, we taught that to employees who said they could NEVER drive auto......took about 30 minutes.

 

There's no way shes comfortable driving an Auto and I'm not going to try forcing her.  She's tried several times and she didn't "soon get used to it".

 

Not really an issue at the moment as an EV won't do what we need it to do based on the three we tried anyway. In the future if manual gearboxes disappear I suspect we might have a problem.  That said I really dislike autos as well so will avoid one for as long as possible.

[boxbrownie]

4 hours ago, admiles said:

 

There's no way shes comfortable driving an Auto and I'm not going to try forcing her.  She's tried several times and she didn't "soon get used to it".

 

Not really an issue at the moment as an EV won't do what we need it to do based on the three we tried anyway. In the future if manual gearboxes disappear I suspect we might have a problem.  That said I really dislike autos as well so will avoid one for as long as possible.

It does sound like you both don’t want to change, so don’t.......for as long as possible.

[faulcon1]

14 hours ago, PatB said:

But fairly typical of the Australian view of EVs. Which explains why we are where we are on this side of the world. 

Perth W.A is not the other "side of the world" just the other side of the country, with vast reserves of iron ore. Where do you think all that iron ore goes, to China one of the worlds biggest polluters.

Do you Pat B own a full EV? and if so which one and why did you buy an EV over an ICE. If you bought an EV because you like the concept, the car, the idea of not buying petrol etc, yes I can see the logic in that and well done good on you. But if you bought it just to do your bit to save the planet then you're wrong. EV's won't save the planet as Tesla fanboys like to think. Elon Musk's launch of the yet to be put into production Tesla truck was full of promises but the one piece of crucial information namely what the tare weight of the truck will be, was left out. It's that crucial piece of lacking info that will make trucking companies not place any orders for it. If the truck is heavy when empty then it can only carry a small amount of mechandise. That is not good for a trucking business. You can't load a truck to the hilt for roads have weight limits on them even here in Australia. There are stationary and mobile testing stations for checking a loaded rigs weight and if a rig is overweight then a huge fine is on the way because overweight rigs do huge damage to the roads.

For me I can see the convenience of using an EV for round town driving. But for long distance driving my big 4.0L ICE Falcon is far more practical.  Four beefy Australian men and all their luggage took a Toyota Prius from Sydney to Adelaide and the economy was appalling. They drove back in a Ford Falcon G6E which returned better economy overall than the Prius which is basically just a city car. On a country drive which I do a lot of my  Falcon returns around 7.0L/100km or 40mpg. The average fuel economy indicates 6.8L-7.2L/100km so around 7.0L/100km. That's not bad for a car that weighs over two tons and driving on bitumen and dirt roads.

[PatB]

1 hour ago, faulcon1 said:

Perth W.A is not the other "side of the world" just the other side of the country, with vast reserves of iron ore. Where do you think all that iron ore goes, to China one of the worlds biggest polluters.

Do you Pat B own a full EV? and if so which one and why did you buy an EV over an ICE. If you bought an EV because you like the concept, the car, the idea of not buying petrol etc, yes I can see the logic in that and well done good on you. But if you bought it just to do your bit to save the planet then you're wrong. EV's won't save the planet as Tesla fanboys like to think. Elon Musk's launch of the yet to be put into production Tesla truck was full of promises but the one piece of crucial information namely what the tare weight of the truck will be, was left out. It's that crucial piece of lacking info that will make trucking companies not place any orders for it. If the truck is heavy when empty then it can only carry a small amount of mechandise. That is not good for a trucking business. You can't load a truck to the hilt for roads have weight limits on them even here in Australia. There are stationary and mobile testing stations for checking a loaded rigs weight and if a rig is overweight then a huge fine is on the way because overweight rigs do huge damage to the roads.

For me I can see the convenience of using an EV for round town driving. But for long distance driving my big 4.0L ICE Falcon is far more practical.  Four beefy Australian men and all their luggage took a Toyota Prius from Sydney to Adelaide and the economy was appalling. They drove back in a Ford Falcon G6E which returned better economy overall than the Prius which is basically just a city car. On a country drive which I do a lot of my  Falcon returns around 7.0L/100km or 40mpg. The average fuel economy indicates 6.8L-7.2L/100km so around 7.0L/100km. That's not bad for a car that weighs over two tons and driving on bitumen and dirt roads.

Lot of assumptions about my circumstances and motivations there. 

 

No, I don't currently own an EV, but will as soon as my preferred vehicle type becomes available at a price I can afford. That may be some time away, for various reasons, but it will happen. Couple of reasons. First, being able to get some of my transport energy from the PV array on my roof would be better value to me than selling it back to Western Power for not very much. Second, for a day to day vehicle, rather than a Sunday toy, the white-goods like, turn-key reliability and lower maintenance of a decent EV is very attractive. I've used rolling projects, classics and clunkers for everyday transport and, frankly I've had enough. Even getting rid of the fairly minimal fluid, filter and belt maintenance of a modern Ice would be good. 

 

No, I wouldn't (currently) do a Nullabor crossing in an EV but the fact is that, for the majority of Australia's highly urbanised population, long country trips are a fantasy rather than a reality. Certainly here in WA I'd estimate, based on some professional involvement with the vehicles and roads of WA, that 75% or more of the light vehicle fleet never travels more than ~100km from Perth CBD, and most spends much of its life carrying 1 or at most 2 people. Well within the capabilities of even current generation EVs. We might all think we need the capacity to drive to Brisbane towing a 30 foot boat, but the reality is that only a vanishingly small minority actually do. 

 

Quite what relevance heavy truck weight limits have in the current discussion I'm not sure. I don't think anyone is claiming that electric traction is yet at a stage where it's practical for the big stuff. Thing is, technology doesn't stand still - well, apart from in Australia maybe - so it'll get there eventually. Probably sooner than we might expect. 

 

I don't really go with the need for big engines for long distances either. Much as I like big, lazy lumps, and still have ambitions to own at least one V8 before I die, here again the world has moved on. A while ago I did Perth-Melbourne-Perth in a 2l turbo diesel (yeah, I know) van, doing the trip back in 2.5 days driving daylight only. It taxed neither my, nor its endurance, even cruising at speeds that got me a ticket when I didn't follow my own advice to ease off a bit west of Balladonia. 

 

And, finally, the question remains, where will Australians get these large, ICE vehicles that are, allegedly, so essential here? The rest of the world is going electric or hybrid. Australia now has no native vehicle manufacturing. Like it or not we're stuck with what the rest of the world makes. We'll adapt and make it work because, in spite of our best King Canute impressions, we won't have any choice. 

[Guest]

On the subject of Tesla trucks....

 

https://electrek.co/2019/08/15/tesla-semi-electric-truck-exceeds-range-expectation-test-driver/

[Southern Steve]

The thing I most ponder on is this.


EV's are all very well, but how are world govt's going to recoup all the lost revenue from duty on fossil fuels I wonder?


Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

[boxbrownie]

2 hours ago, Southern Steve said:

The thing I most ponder on is this.


EV's are all very well, but how are world govt's going to recoup all the lost revenue from duty on fossil fuels I wonder?


Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

What do you think Smart meters are for, to save the home consumer money? 

 

Soon to have time/demand charging regimes and they will know when an EV is being charged........guess what will happen then?

[Reorte]

On 16/08/2019 at 10:41, Jol Wilkinson said:

One thing I would like explained is how PHEV hybrids are said to be significantly more economical than their petrol equivalents. The energy used to propel the vehicle is the same, so unless some of it is derived from charging the battery pack externally, where is the saving in petrol usage coming from? From my school day and engineering student days, I learned that converting energy from one form to another usually incurred some losses, so charging the battery by the petrol engine and then using that to power the car should be less efficient than just using the petrol engine. Transmission losses may be less, but surely not to the the extent of the increase in efficiency that some people are claiming.

 

Well we've had diesel-electric trains for a long time so the idea certainly isn't anything new (on top of the energy recovery mentioned above).

[Guest]

1 hour ago, boxbrownie said:

What do you think Smart meters are for, to save the home consumer money? 

 

Soon to have time/demand charging regimes and they will know when an EV is being charged........guess what will happen then?

 

They won't know. Certainly not if you're charging from a three pin socket.

Road pricing is probably how things will go.

[Jol Wilkinson]

1 hour ago, Reorte said:

 

Well we've had diesel-electric trains for a long time so the idea certainly isn't anything new (on top of the energy recovery mentioned above).

But those are designed primarily to provide a method of power transfer from a large on-board power source to multiple driving axles. Power delivery was probably  the  major design factor with economy and environmental  considerations further down the list.

 

I believe electric power for locomotives pre dated diesel electric, but again the major driving factors were about overall operating efficiency, flexibility and intensive operation. After all, steam power was relatively inefficient, both thermodynamically and operationally.

[Guest]

So this is where the UK's electricity is coming from right now.