Electric, Hybrid and Alternative fuelled vehicles - News and Discussion

[Ron Ron Ron]

2 hours ago, Vistisen said:

...............I did 520 miles in less than 8 hours and an average speed of just under 70mph. No electric car will ever do that in my lifetime!

 

I'm sorry to hear that you haven't got much longer to live.

My condolences to your family and loved ones.

 

 

[edit:  This is meant to be irony, not malicious.]

 

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Edited April 27, 2021 by Ron Ron Ron

[Joseph_Pestell]

3 hours ago, Reorte said:

Well it depends on why the "can't" comes in, although I'm not aware of any considerations that mean someone can drive a manual but not an automatic (as opposed to the other way around). If you've never driven an automatic before (I've not for example) I'd imagine it takes a little getting used to but nowhere near as much as learning to drive in the first place did.

 

I have had two previous episodes with automatics.

 

First was a Vauxhall 2.3L estate which was my boss' car which I used to take pupils various places. I was 23 at the time and found it easy albeit not very comfortable with its three gears.

 

Second was a Reliant Scimitar in 1988, so I was 31. Again easy. I would have preferred a manual but they are rarer.

 

Now a Citroen C5, picked up recently. I am getting there but it ain't so easy. At 64, one is just not so adaptable.

[Joseph_Pestell]

8 minutes ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

 

I'm sorry to hear that you haven't got much longer to live.

My condolences to your family and loved ones.

 

 

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Perhaps not a very "appropriate" response.

 

But I think that there are already a few all-electric cars that could do that.

[boxbrownie]

10 minutes ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

Perhaps not a very "appropriate" response.

 

But I think that there are already a few all-electric cars that could do that.

Oh I don’t know, it was a very “dark” entry to the thread.....unnecessary so really 

[Kris]

8 hours ago, Nick C said:

I think for most people, a reliable 200 mile range, and 80% in 30m topup, would be more than enough, assuming chargers were prolific - you're recommended to take a break every two hours anyway, so that's 100-140 miles depending on average speed. Plus how many people regularly do >200 mile journeys? I know there are some (as we've seen in this thread), but for most it's probably only once a year to go on holiday - perhaps we'll see the nature of those journey's change to suit a different travelling pattern?

I suspect that the number of people who make multiple 200 mile + journeys is higher than you believe, particularly in more remote regions of the country. Of the couples I know, the majority have at least one partner who's parents live "up country".  

[Ron Ron Ron]

4 hours ago, johnlambert said:

......The situation is probably worse with ICE cars because you can still hear gears changing but it's not necessarily happening when they expect it; .....

 

What rubbish cars have you been driving?

..or was that in the "olden days"?

(note: lame attempt at humour)

 

Joking apart....We have 3 automatics in our family fleet (plus 2 manuals).

2 have 7-speed auto boxes and one an 8-speed box.

In fully auto mode, you can't hear the autos change gear or even feel them changing gear.

No momentary loss of power as they change or anything like that. The change is lightening quick and imperceptible through the gears, up and down.

In fact, most of the time you wouldn't even realise any gear change were taking place, unless going into manual mode and using the shifting paddles behind the steering wheel.

 

When we bought our first automatic car, back in the mid/late 90's, a straight 6-cylinder petrol Beemer, Mrs. Ron was initially very apprehensive about driving it, being the first auto sh'd ever driven.

She took to it like a duck to water.

Since then I've always driven autos, mainly because they were all  the sort of cars that are normally only available as an auto.

Mrs. Ron continued with manual cars until about 8 years go, when she bought a nice auto.

We have continued to have a couple of manuals in the household (offspring's cars).

Neither of us (me and 'er) have had any problems switching back and forth between autos and manuals.

 

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Edited April 27, 2021 by Ron Ron Ron

[black and decker boy]

1 hour ago, Vistisen said:

I am waiting for my hybrid to arrive. I did look at going fully electric. But I do regular day trips to the capitol which is 220 miles in each direction. My major problem is when I get there, I typically have meetings several different places in town, So I cannot just leave the car to recharge for longer periods of time. The other issue is that motorway speed limits here 85 mph. Electric cars might be getting up to a range of 400mph plus, but that is at 50 mph not 85mph. Driving at 50 mph increases my working day by over 3 hours!

But when not doing these day trips I normally use the car to drive between 15 to 25 several times a day. So a hybrid will make sense for these trips as it has a range of about 25 miles ‘pure’ electricity.

Before Corona I also did a twice yearly dash to the UK on mainly unrestricted autobahns where the range/time difference is even more extreme. My last trip home was done the day that lockdown started in Germany. There was no traffic on the roads, and I had to reach the border to Denmark before it too was closed. I did 520 miles in less than 8 hours and an average speed of just under 70mph. No electric car will ever do that in my lifetime!

I think it’s a generational thing.

 

we have become accustomed to having cars reliable enough and frugal enough to do a 500 Mile plus non stop journey. It certainly wasn’t like that growing up in the 70s & 80s. I too have done it though not nonstop but it’s a ball breaker for fatigue and I’d rather not do it again. I used to commute 45,000 miles a year. It’s only when I stopped that I realised how much energy that took from me.

 

the new generation seem to have different ideals & expectations too with less car ownership, more car pool, more local living, less working hours & living more life. They are generally way more environmentally aware and would baulk at driving over such distances.

 

whether EVs every reach the capability to do such journeys is, to a degree, irrelevant. ICE cars will be extinct and sales will continue to decline way before the ban actually starts. Petrol & diesel costs are likely to rise through ‘green’ taxes so people will simply adapt (and stop to recharge) or avoid driving  and use the train / plane / hyper loop / teleport*
 

*delete as applicable to your 2040 utopia 

[boxbrownie]

13 minutes ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

I have had two previous episodes with automatics.

 

First was a Vauxhall 2.3L estate which was my boss' car which I used to take pupils various places. I was 23 at the time and found it easy albeit not very comfortable with its three gears.

My very first “auto” experience was when I was tasked with taking a series of pretty Essex views to entice graduates to join the company, one of my bosses at the time was a lovely bloke and he said “use my car” and as of course it was a management roll vehicle, a Cortina 2.3 Ghia Auto, very posh (at the time) but it was my first auto......first stop at traffic lights I put it in neutral, lights changed and into 1st gear, foot down and Iurched backwards a few yards.....SH1TE!.....nobody behind, now look at the “gear stick” and into D...and off I went. From that moment on I had my left leg tucked well under my right leg for the rest of the day! 
 

As you say, not impossible but needs bit of concentration for the first few days.

[boxbrownie]

7 minutes ago, Kris said:

I suspect that the number of people who make multiple 200 mile + journeys is higher than you believe, particularly in more remote regions of the country. Of the couples I know, the majority have at least one partner who's parents live "up country".  

We make the kids come to us....we are the ones with the beaches and sand 

[Guest]

10 minutes ago, boxbrownie said:

 I put it in neutral, lights changed and into 1st gear, foot down and Iurched backwards a few yards.....SH1TE!.....nobody behind, now look at the “gear stick” and into D...and off I went. From that moment on I had my left leg tucked well under my right leg for the rest of the day! 

 

I had trouble with muscle memory and the way releasing the handbrake is keyed to pressing the clutch...

Never had a problem with the Leaf even though the parking brake is sort of where the clutch would be. Probably because the prompt to change gear from an engine note is missing.

 

Series hybrids will probably take over from automatics for the last few years of ICE vehicles. Having seen one stripped down there are barely half a dozen bits in the things.

The Honda Jazz is now series hybrid only and does a cute fake gear change noise on acceleration where it tickles the engine note. Like the sound track on a film where there are continual gear change noises...

[Jol Wilkinson]

49 minutes ago, black and decker boy said:

I think it’s a generational thing.

 

we have become accustomed to having cars reliable enough and frugal enough to do a 500 Mile plus non stop journey. It certainly wasn’t like that growing up in the 70s & 80s. I too have done it though not nonstop but it’s a ball breaker for fatigue and I’d rather not do it again. I used to commute 45,000 miles a year. It’s only when I stopped that I realised how much energy that took from me.

 

the new generation seem to have different ideals & expectations too with less car ownership, more car pool, more local living, less working hours & living more life. They are generally way more environmentally aware and would baulk at driving over such distances.

 

whether EVs every reach the capability to do such journeys is, to a degree, irrelevant. ICE cars will be extinct and sales will continue to decline way before the ban actually starts. Petrol & diesel costs are likely to rise through ‘green’ taxes so people will simply adapt (and stop to recharge) or avoid driving  and use the train / plane / hyper loop / teleport*
 

*delete as applicable to your 2040 utopia 

 

While petrol & diesel costs are will probably rise through ‘green’ taxes, so will the cost of electric motoring as the government seeks to get back the major revenue stream from the motorist and transport industry that it has relied on for decades.

[Kris]

double post, whoops

Edited April 27, 2021 by Kris

[Vistisen]

1 hour ago, boxbrownie said:

Oh I don’t know, it was a very “dark” entry to the thread.....unnecessary so really 

It wasn't meant to be a dark entry, I'm truly sorry if it upset people. But I really don't expect an electric car will be able to cruise at 100mph plus for hours on end, any time soon, if ever. As other people have said. people's travel patterns  are changing. I have googled for data and the most positive estimates of a Tesla's range at 100mph are about 100-125 miles that means at least 5 recharges. Even if  the EV holy grail: solid state batteries do exist in the future and allow a recharge from empty to 100% in 10 minutes. That would add about an hour to the journey time. So to beat my time you would have to do an average speed of 85 mph. Which in normal circumstances, would not be possible. Battery technology will advance but the simple fact that as speed increases the amount of power needed to overcome drag can not really be changed, means that high speeds conume more energy. When I did my 'run' I had to stop twice to fill up. If I had done the journey at 50 Mph I could have done it on one tank.

[Reorte]

7 minutes ago, Vistisen said:

It wasn't meant to be a dark entry, I'm truly sorry if it upset people. But I really don't expect an electric car will be able to cruise at 100mph plus for hours on end, any time soon, if ever. As other people have said. people's travel patterns  are changing. I have googled for data and the most positive estimates of a Tesla's range at 100mph are about 100-125 miles that means at least 5 recharges. Even if  the EV holy grail: solid state batteries do exist in the future and allow a recharge from empty to 100% in 10 minutes. That would add about an hour to the journey time. So to beat my time you would have to do an average speed of 85 mph. Which in normal circumstances, would not be possible. Battery technology will advance but the simple fact that as speed increases the amount of power needed to overcome drag can not really be changed, means that high speeds conume more energy. When I did my 'run' I had to stop twice to fill up. If I had done the journey at 50 Mph I could have done it on one tank.

 

Perhaps, but is that really such a bad thing? It's back to what I said earlier - things shape themselves to whatever is supported, with a feeling that a bit more is needed just to make things so much better. But when that bit more comes along, same again. So really scaling things back really shouldn't be that much of a problem even if it takes a bit of adjustment.

 

People want quicker journeys, but make them twice as fast and they seem to end up needing to travel twice as fast or twice as often, or more, and say they need quicker journeys... At the ludicrous extreme it'll end up with your bathroom at Alpha Centauri, kitchen orbiting Sirius, living room on Earth and saying how it's impossible to get by without a rapid teleporter.

Edited April 27, 2021 by Reorte

[black and decker boy]

34 minutes ago, Jol Wilkinson said:

 

While petrol & diesel costs are will probably rise through ‘green’ taxes, so will the cost of electric motoring as the government seeks to get back the major revenue stream from the motorist and transport industry that it has relied on for decades.

Undoubtedly. I still expect fossil fuel to rise faster as they tax it out of existence. 

[johnofwessex]

One point worth making is that while cars are moving to electric, Commercial Vehicles are so far not, or at least anything like as rapidly so new drivers will probably want to be able to drive an IC engined manual  transmition vehicle for a while to come

[Guest]

44 minutes ago, johnofwessex said:

One point worth making is that while cars are moving to electric, Commercial Vehicles are so far not, or at least anything like as rapidly so new drivers will probably want to be able to drive an IC engined manual  transmition vehicle for a while to come

 

Commercial vehicles will flip very quickly as soon as the costs are favourable.

We're probably keeping the Jazz around so daughter has to drive a manual. Her chosen career path might involve driving horse lorries. Nobody ever buys new ones of those.

[Joseph_Pestell]

1 hour ago, johnofwessex said:

One point worth making is that while cars are moving to electric, Commercial Vehicles are so far not, or at least anything like as rapidly so new drivers will probably want to be able to drive an IC engined manual  transmition vehicle for a while to come

 

An interesting point which is a puzzle to me. A big part of the commercial fleet these days is courier firms. Typically, a day's mileage is around 200, ideal for an electric vehicle.

[Ron Ron Ron]

1 hour ago, johnofwessex said:

One point worth making is that while cars are moving to electric, Commercial Vehicles are so far not, or at least anything like as rapidly.......

 

There's a slowly growing range of small and medium sized commercial vans becoming available, with larger vans and small trucks in the pipeline.

It's early days at the moment, but congestion charging and other restrictions will help spur users and operators to make the switch.

 

...and in reply to Joseph, above....

 

Some large fleet operators such as UPS, have already placed substantial orders for electric delivery vans.

(note that UPS has ordered 10,000 vehicles just from one supplier.)

 

https://www.commercialfleet.org/news/van-news/2020/01/31/ups-orders-10-000-arrival-electric-trucks

 

 

The Royal Mail are also starting to replace their diesel vans with EV's....

 

 

 

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Edited April 27, 2021 by Ron Ron Ron

[Ron Ron Ron]

Delivery firm, DPD have ordered 600 electric vans for the UK.

300 Nissan e-NV200  and 300 MAN eTGE.

 

Tesco aim to replace their entire 5,000 strong fleet of delivery vans with EV's by 2028.

They've already started deploying their first electric vans, in London.

 

Openreach have placed their first order for nearly 300 EV's, with thousands more planned to be ordered over the next few years.

 

The list goes on and will grow as more vehicles become available. 

 

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Edited April 27, 2021 by Ron Ron Ron

[Vistisen]

21 minutes ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

 

There's a slowly growing range of small and medium sized commercial vans becoming available, with larger vans and small trucks in the pipeline.

It's early days at the moment, but congestion charging and other restrictions will help spur users and operators to make the switch.

 

...and in reply to Joseph, above....

 

Some large fleet operators such as UPS, have already placed substantial orders for electric delivery vans.

(note that UPS has ordered 10,000 vehicles just from one supplier.)

 

https://www.commercialfleet.org/news/van-news/2020/01/31/ups-orders-10-000-arrival-electric-trucks

 

 

The Royal Mail are also starting to replace their diesel vans with EV's....

 

 

 

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I imagine that this will work well. lots of regenerative braking when you stop at every house!

 

[Joseph_Pestell]

9 minutes ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

Delivery firm, DPD have ordered 600 electric vans for the UK.

300 Nissan e-NV200  and 300 MAN eTGE.

 

 

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Not a massive percentage relative to the overall fleet size. And the NV200 seems a bit small.

 

A dedicated electric design would seem a better option.

[Ron Ron Ron]

6 minutes ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

Not a massive percentage relative to the overall fleet size. And the NV200 seems a bit small.

 

A dedicated electric design would seem a better option.

 

These are the first orders and I assume that more orders will come as newer alternatives become available and as the existing fleet leases run down.

 

The Nissan and MAN vans will no doubt do the job required of them and will eventually be replaced with newer more efficient designs.

These first electric vans will end up going into the 2nd hand market at some future point, ending up with "white van man".

 

Something else to consider, is that the fleet leasing companies will be looking at the bleak prospects for the future residual values of ICE vehicles.

There'll be a point where the calculated future values will fall low enough to push lease costs too high to be commercially viable.

By that point, they'll be able to offer an at least comparable, if not cheaper electric vehicle.

On top of that, either/or any incentives and punitive measures that come into play, will all help push the move over to electric.

.

Edited April 27, 2021 by Ron Ron Ron

[black and decker boy]

7 minutes ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

 

 

These first electric vans will end up going into the 2nd hand market at some future point, ending up with "white van man".

 

 

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God save us. Faster accelerating and silent running. White Van Man goes stealth.

[Ian Morgan]

2 hours ago, johnofwessex said:

One point worth making is that while cars are moving to electric, Commercial Vehicles are so far not, or at least anything like as rapidly so new drivers will probably want to be able to drive an IC engined manual  transmition vehicle for a while to come

 

https://www.dhl.com/gb-en/home/press/press-archive/2020/dhl-supply-chain-takes-to-the-road-with-uks-first-electric-16-tonne-truck.html

 

 

 

And a DPD electric van regularly delivers to houses in my street, and we are not particularly urban here.