Electric, Hybrid and Alternative fuelled vehicles - News and Discussion

[30801]

The proposed 45 charging point locations seem to indicate that Wales and Lincolnshire/Notts/S Yorks area is already well covered or the residents have done something to upset the company's management.

 

In terms of EV charging Wales is Mordor.

We don't go there.

[jonny777]

The information already posted is all well and good.

 

However...

 

How is the electricity to charge all these vehicles going to be produced? We're pretty much 'on the blood' as far as present generating capacity vs demand goes during winter, particularly when there's a big high pressure system over the UK and wind generation is minimal. 

 

 

It seems not to matter that this myth has been exposed many, many times in the recent past. It is still quoted regularly as if it is fact. 

 

Let me state again - it is not large high pressure systems sat over the UK with cold frosty nights, or freezing fog, which result in peak demands. 

 

Peak demands occur when low temperatures are accompanied by strong winds - as in the "Beast From The East" scenario back in February. Therefore, at times of max demand, wind generation will be high as well. 

[jjb1970]

More premium sector EV's on the way.

 

Jaguars next XJ.

 

Jaguar J-Pace  ...will be available in hybrid and/or EV versions too, borrowings tech from the all-EV new i-Pace.

 

BMW i4

 

BMW i5

 

Audi E-tron

 

 

 

.

Splendid stuff! I will be interested in seeing the next Jaguar XJ in particular as Jaguar have been making some seriously good cars in recent years. These cars are I think a sign of where the industry is going and why I think people will embrace the EV.

[Ron Ron Ron]

Noise makers will be mandatory from IIRC 2020 and will have to be retrofitted.

 

 

Hopefully, downloads will be available so we can get lovely throating V8 and V12 roars, complete with popping and burbling exhaust sounds.

 

That £xx premium audio upgrade will be very necessary then. 

 

 

.

[Reorte]

Noise makers will be mandatory from IIRC 2020 and will have to be retrofitted.

Oh great One of the big advantages to the world of electric cars getting removed. So much for hoping they'd help to make the world more pleasant. Finally something new comes along that I actually like the idea of for once and they go and try to spoil that too.

Edited May 22, 2018 by Reorte

[Oldddudders]

Following a certain wedding this weekend, I was interested to note that the happy couple drove off in an electric Jaguar. Not next year’s model today, but an E-type drophead, which I think was LHD. Reg plate was E190518.

 

Product placement or what?

[Zomboid]

Oh great One of the big advantages to the world of electric cars getting removed. So much for hoping they'd help to make the world more pleasant. Finally something new comes along that I actually like the idea of for once and they go and try to spoil that too.

Depends what they actually do. As a pedestrian, a near silent electric car (or indeed a hybrid running on electric) can very easily sneak up on you - this has happened to me several times. Some kind of sounds on the outside is very much a worthwhile safety feature.

It should still be possible to have a quiet, vibration free interior.

[Reorte]

Depends what they actually do. As a pedestrian, a near silent electric car (or indeed a hybrid running on electric) can very easily sneak up on you - this has happened to me several times. Some kind of sounds on the outside is very much a worthwhile safety feature.

It should still be possible to have a quiet, vibration free interior.

It's not the interior that I'm concerned with. The constant background noise of traffic is one of the banes of modern life (even in a lot of rural areas it's there), yet so pervasive people aren't generally conciously even aware of it unless they're right next to a busy motorway. Whilst a good deal of it is tyre and aerodynamic noise, which will still be there in electrics, anything to reduce the noise levels is a good thing. But you're right it depends on what they actually do, and near silent cars creeping around a supermarket car park is a recipe for trouble.

Edited May 22, 2018 by Reorte

[jonny777]

Following a certain wedding this weekend, I was interested to note that the happy couple drove off in an electric Jaguar. Not next year’s model today, but an E-type drophead, which I think was LHD. Reg plate was E190518.

 

Product placement or what?

 

 

 

Sadly, in a blow for sexual equality - it was Harry doing the driving. 

[Nick C]

I like the idea of EVs, but there's still several major shortcomings in my view...

 

• Battery Construction - these currently use a lot of rare-earth metals, which are difficult to extract (and so bad for the environment), and virtually all come from China (eggs-in-one-basket)
• Safety - as someone mentioned in an earlier post, if they're involved in a crash, there's a significant risk of shorting. Because of this, for example, all EVs/hybrids are banned from motorsport as it proved impossible to create a satisfactory risk assesment - I believe the current Fire Brigade recommendation is to bury the car for several days until the battery has cooled down enough to be safe to move...
• Insurance - a friend of mine is an insurance analyst, and has stated that they're very difficult to insure because of the above battery issues - even the smallest prang can risk damaging the batteries, and thus write-off the car.
• Power Supply - The national grid is not designed to take these sorts of loads (in fact, I have it on good authority that it's straining at the seams as it is, and is only still working because it was massively over-engineered in the 1960s). We've got several power stations reaching EOL in the next few years, and not enough coming on-stream to replace them. Even if that does get solved, the "last mile" connections aren't designed to take the current draw of several EVs charging at once - perfeclty fine if you're the only one on your street with one, but when everyone gets one...
• Residual Value - The average car has a lifespan currently of around 12-15 years, and many will last happily until their 20s (just look at how many 90s cars are still around). From what I understand, current EV batteries last around 8-10 years, after which they start to lose significan amounts of range, and need replacing - the cost will likely be more than the car is worth by that point. I'm not going to spend £1000 on a 10 year old car if it needs £5k+ of new batteries before I can use it - and that will follow up the chain as the person who, for example, buys it at 5 years and sells it at 10 won't want to pay as much if they know they're not going to be able to sell it when they're done.
• Reliability/Ease of maintenance - this applies increasingly to modern IC cars as well, but I want to know that I can fix my car if it goes wrong - not have to get it towed to a dealer and plugged into a computer, with software that's only available at main dealers or costs so much than an indepandant garage or DIY person can't get it.
• Lifespan - if the electronics and battery effectively bring the maximum lifespan of the car down to 10 years, that's twice as many cars that need to be produced and disposed of - and that's bad for the environment. Given that the factories are generally in the far east, do we trust the owners to stick to our ideas when it comes to environmental protection? Not much good for the planet as a whole if you're reducing air pollution here just to make it a lot worse elsewhere, that's just making it someone else's problem...

 

Additionally, there's other issues to consider - for example a significant proportion of the particulate pollution from a car comes from abrasion of the tyres and road surface, and that won't be reduced by EVs. The pollution from the power station needs to be accounted for too...

 

Far better to reduce the milage done in private cars:

• Encourage people to walk/cycle for shorter journeys.
• Improve public transport to make that a better alternative. 
• More "park'n'ride" systems and similar incentives to reduce people driving into the town/city centres.
• Improve traffic flow to reduce jams, which cause more pollution.
• Encourage companies to allow people to work remotely where possible - even if it's only one day a week it reduces the average commuter's emissions by a fifth...
• Make it easier for people to live near where they work - why do offices need to be in the centre of London (or other big cities) when there is much cheaper office space available in the dormitory towns surrounding, and a ready pool of employees to choose from...

Personally I now live about 25 minutes walk from my office, and 40 minutes from the town centre. I've got my total annual car milage down to 5-6k, half of the average for the UK, and walking in is a lot less stressful than dealing with the rush-hour commute, and gives me plenty of time to think about the latest modelling project!

[spikey]

One worrying thing I noticed on a TV programme last week, is that if an EV is involved in a crash and needs to be moved, the car can't be touched until someone comes along and confirms the battery hasn't gone open circuit, or similar, and made the exterior of the car live. That will make EV to EV car accidents interesting, do you stop in the car and die from your injuries, or do you electrocute yourself trying to escape the wreckage?

 

Mike.

What on earth sort of voltage do these batteries produce then?

[Reorte]

Encourage companies to allow people to work remotely where possible - even if it's only one day a week it reduces the average commuter's emissions by a fifth...

• Make it easier for people to live near where they work - why do offices need to be in the centre of London (or other big cities) when there is much cheaper office space available in the dormitory towns surrounding, and a ready pool of employees to choose from...

The first isn't something I'm terribly happy about. I want to keep work and home well separated. I think the main reason companies are starting to allow remote working is simply because it's free office space for them. Every town having a collection of small shared offices people can use, supplied with a decent internet connection and other such facilities (maybe a few meeting and / or video conferencing rooms) rather than travelling further into the main one or working from home  is a solution I've had but how viable it would be... It would also help support other businesses in the town.

 

The second is the biggy IMO, and one that I'm bleakly pessimistic about. The pressures that have moved the jobs out of the smaller towns and turned them all in to dormitories remain, and if anything get continually stronger. Make transport easier and the centralisation appeal increases because it permits ever greater economies of scale.

[Reorte]

What on earth sort of voltage do these batteries produce then?

Think of the amount of energy that has to be stored in them - how much petrol to move a car the same distance? Even allowing for electrics being more efficient the equivalent energy in petrol would rightly make people cautious.

[MarkC]

What on earth sort of voltage do these batteries produce then?

It's the current that these things are capable of that's the problem.

 

*To illustrate this, simply put a steel spanner across the terminals of your car battery...

 

 

...or perhaps not

 

Seriously, this is why, when working on your car's electrical system, you should disconnect the battery from the body (the -ve terminal) first, to avoid short circuiting the battery when disconnecting the +ve terminal

 

*meant in jest. Seriously...

[30801]

Think of the amount of energy that has to be stored in them - how much petrol to move a car the same distance? Even allowing for electrics being more efficient the equivalent energy in petrol would rightly make people cautious.

 

There's the thing. Your petrol tank contains lots more energy than a battery and will cheerfully release all of it at once. With an EV the fire brigade will actually have something left to squirt water at when they arrive.

 

On the subject of battery isolation the fire brigade know where the isolator is that every EV has.

[rdr]

Here's the answer to all ev's.

 

 

why oh why are we worrying about the time it takes to charge and the cost of charging and where to get the car charged. The answer is extremely simple.

 

 

As petrol/diesel car owners do we own a refinery, do we own a petrol station, of course we don't, we rely on this to be provided for us and we pay for it.

 

 

Here's the answer, and it's so simple you'll kick yourself that you hadn't thought of it yourself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Manufacturers will have designed the cars so that the batteries are removable from the underside in a pack, you then drive into the original petrol stations that are now converted for ev's. Your near exhausted battery pack is removed and replaced in a short time and you pay for the power available in the replaced pack. 

 

I told you it was simple.

Edited May 22, 2018 by rdr

[admiles]

Most Leaf weird not starting problems can be fixed by replacing the 12v battery.

No idea why it would struggle with 40 miles. Has he left the hand brake on?

 

You might want to mention that to the local Nissan dealer because they're stumped. It's also his third car in 18 months

as the previous two had numerous faults too and were rejected and replaced. Frankly he can't wait to get shot of it and I

can see why. 

[admiles]

Depends what they actually do. As a pedestrian, a near silent electric car (or indeed a hybrid running on electric) can very easily sneak up on you - this has happened to me several times. Some kind of sounds on the outside is very much a worthwhile safety feature.

It should still be possible to have a quiet, vibration free interior.

 

And that's exactly why i don't want an electric and will never want one. I want the burble of a nice engine, the vibration, the manual gear stick alive under my hand.....

That's what driving is all about for me. Not some soulless, sanitized, beige experience. 

[Nearholmer]

A lot of what is discussed above is characteristic/symptomatic of “still fairly immature” technology (EVs are about 130 years old in concept, but development went dormant for about 100 of those years), and my guess is that most of the issues will “work their way out of the system” over a period of maybe five or ten years, but only if the pressure to get rid of IC engines is kept up for long enough to give EVs a ‘growing space’.

 

Something I think EVs do need to do is ‘throw off the shackles of the IC engine’, by which I mean they need to be designed ground-up, not as adaptations of IC heritage vehicles, or to fit the visual preconceptions of what a car should look like. The BMW i series is pretty good in that respect, but I’m really looking forward to the VW electric microbus, which genuinely does look to be conceptually novel.

 

As someone who finds the technology fascinating, but is a natural late adopter of gizmos, so wants to wait for the next generation of EVs, when many of the bugs have been ironed out, I might not live long enough to ever buy one. And this despite living in the electric car capital of the U.K.!

 

It’s not a love of the Mr Toad experience of driving that is making me wait, because, try as I might, I can’t relate that in any way to the daily reality of car driving, it’s not wanting to buy something that ‘sort of still half prototype’.

Edited May 22, 2018 by Nearholmer

[Reorte]

And that's exactly why i don't want an electric and will never want one. I want the burble of a nice engine, the vibration, the manual gear stick alive under my hand.....

That's what driving is all about for me. Not some soulless, sanitized, beige experience. 

I feel like that about an awful lot of the world. For some reason electric cars don't have that effect (although other aspects of modern cars which apply to electrics too do).

[admiles]

It’s not a love of the Mr Toad experience of driving that is making me wait, because, try as I might, I can’t relate that in any way to the daily reality of car driving, it’s not wanting to buy something that ‘sort of still half prototype’.

 

For me there are so many negatives to EVs the whole idea falls over way before I even get to the "Mr Toad" aspect of driving.  While you may not relate that to every day driving, I do.   I was open minded, I've had a few different EVs on loan from dealers (Prius, Leaf, Zoe, C-HR & i3) and without exception they've all had issues that would break the deal for me and my family.

Edited May 22, 2018 by admiles

[Ozexpatriate]

...I  want the burble of a nice engine, the vibration, the manual gear stick alive under my hand.....

That's what driving is all about for me. Not some soulless, sanitized, beige experience. 

And yet we have more than 100 years of automobile development reducing engine noise and vibration, replacing manual transmissions with automatic ones and reducing road noise and vibration to make interiors whisper quiet.

 

I wonder what the ratio of sales of manual to automatic transmissions is?

 

(For the record my car has a manual transmission.) 

[jjb1970]

There's the thing. Your petrol tank contains lots more energy than a battery and will cheerfully release all of it at once. With an EV the fire brigade will actually have something left to squirt water at when they arrive.

 

On the subject of battery isolation the fire brigade know where the isolator is that every EV has.

I wish it were that simple, but being familiar with large solid state batteries in other applications it isn't that simple and fire/safety is a major issue. No more so than safety of oil (or hydrogen) but neither should it be understated. The risks are different, I wouldn't rate them as being lower. Ditto for hydrogen I wouldn't rate the risks as necessarily being higher than for oil but they are different.

[admiles]

And yet we have more than 100 years of automobile development reducing engine noise and vibration, replacing manual transmissions with automatic ones and reducing road noise and vibration to make interiors whisper quiet.

 

I wonder what the ratio of sales of manual to automatic transmissions is?

 

(For the record my car has a manual transmission.) 

 

For my car I can answer that one!  20% manual to 80% auto. That said I suspect for most cars in the UK manuals still out sell autos.

[jjb1970]

As someone who finds the technology fascinating, but is a natural late adopter of gizmos, so wants to wait for the next generation of EVs, when many of the bugs have been ironed out, I might not live long enough to ever buy one. And this despite living in the electric car capital of the U.K.!

 

It’s not a love of the Mr Toad experience of driving that is making me wait, because, try as I might, I can’t relate that in any way to the daily reality of car driving, it’s not wanting to buy something that ‘sort of still half prototype’.

I think that as with any new(-ish) technology the thing to try and do is to look past the technology of today and at where it could be tomorrow. The first generation EVs were really rather mediocre, I thought the first good efforts were the BMW i3 and Tesla Model S. The overall average of these cars is still a bit uninspiring but it is changing very quickly and more and more genuinely desirable EVs are entering the market.

For my car I can answer that one!  20% manual to 80% auto. That said I suspect for most cars in the UK manuals still out sell autos.

We have DSG boxes in both cars, and to be honest after getting used to a twin clutch sequential box wouldn't go back to manual.