Electric vehicles

[Lons]

+1

And they forget interest rates of 17% !

**** Roger that brings back unpleasant memories, the hikes in mortgage payments meant drastic cutbacks elsewhere if we wanted to keep a roof over our heads.

Of course we didn't have £100 trainers or £1000 mobiles to pay for back then and before anyone says it I don't think they were the good old days at all. :wink:

 

[Terry - Somerset]

Do you have a source for that statement, Terry, as I think it is probably flawed or biased. I looked at a few lists out of curiosity and it quotes districts more rather than actual towns. So if that is their criteria then the argument is flawed. For example, Malvern Hills district is shown as having a population of 78,000 but sure as ****, the area covered is vast and without any sensible public (I assume you meant that when you said local ?) transport.

The 83% figure for living in urban areas comes via a gooogle search for "UK urban population" . Looking for more detail this is the reverse of the DEFRA "Rural population 2014/15" which quotes, for England only, 17% in rural areas.

I also did a google for population by size of city to substantiate this - Great Malvern comes out at 37,000 so the figures are clearly not area based.

This is a bit of a generalisation, but towns/cities with more than 100,000 generally have a full (or nearly) full infrastructure - jobs, education, retail, some cultural, clubs, restaurants etc. You could live a life there and never leave town - bar holidays and specialist medical (although I would find this very boring!)

Below 50,000 you would certainly be lacking some key elements. Whether this creates a real problem would depend on he adjacency of other settlements - in the South East probably not, in Central Wales, Highlands, Northumberland etc it probably would.

 

[Trainee neophyte]

Can you check your calcs TN as I honestly can't see how it's possible to make a £3000 saving on fuel alone at low mileage even at that much a litre and how are you going to make an EV work in an off road low ratio environment?

I've had a couple of glasses of the red liquid tonight so my brain's a bit fuzzy at the mo. :lol:

It turns out I may have exaggerated slightly (who? Me?). I fill up about three times a month, at a cost of about €70 a time (plus or minus for both numbers). My fag packet says that is €2520 a year. I do an oil change every 6 months, at around 5,000 miles, so that gives me 10,000 miles a year, or thereabouts. Would that suggest I am paying about €0.25 a mile? Seems about right. It takes me about 12 minutes to drive to town - of which the first kilometre takes 5 minutes. Not really designed for fuel efficient mileage.

Regarding the off-road thing, that is exactly why I don't have an electric vehicle. In reality we would need two cars - one diesel to carry stuff and drive up mountains, and the other electric to go shopping. Two lots of insurance and tax means the savings don't add up. I still want to be fuel independent, and a few solar panels would give me that, for 10 months of the year, guaranteed. So yes, I can't make the numbers work, either, but it doesn't mean I can't dream. The truck is 20 years old now,so we will have to do something fairly soon - say in the next 5 years or so? My neighbour has a pickup that is 45 years old, and still used daily, so I'm not worried too much.

 

[Droogs]

Just for your off roading edification and enjoyment have a look at the "off road electric" channel on Youtube. I'm sure you'll find it very enjoyable

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzRz4qF81Qw

 

[Nigel Burden]

Been there, done that, and still managed to pay off the mortgage after eight years, despite having an about average income, though admittedly we were broke after doing so. If interest rates were to reach those levels again the housing market would collapse, which would be great for those trying to get on the property ladder but there would be a **** of a lot of negative equity, and the economy would likely collapse.

My children are both mid thirties, single, and have mortgages. My son has had slighter higher wages than my daughter until recently, and has paid off about one third of his mortgage in four and a half years. My daughter has paid off about one quarter of hers in four years. She has multiple bank accounts where she deposits money for different purposes, eg. house acc. car acc. photographic acc. etc.

I'm not having a go at youngsters, but I think that many off them have had it relatively easy whilst living at home and don't appreciate the value of money. That's not necessarily their fault but the fault of their parents buying them everything they want.

Back to cars. Both children drive cars. My son who is not interested. only bought a car because the bus that took him to work changed route and he had to go a couple of miles, then change bus to complete his journey. This added about fifteen minutes to a six mile journey. He kept his first car thirteen years only changing it six months ago. he will probably do the same with this car. My daughter changed her first car after four years, buying a six month old Mini Cooper S Checkmate in 2007. She still has this car and refuses to part with it even though the fuel economy is, how should I put it to be polite, poor.

Nigel.

 

[Geoff_S]

Hang on, what's this all about?

https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/overvie ... -cars.html

Imagine where we would be today if this hadn't fizzled out!

There is some very interesting reading out there.

 

[Just4Fun]

I wonder if those youngsters (can't all be "youngsters, surely?) who see no need/want for a car will feel the same when, as already mentioned above, they move some distance away from, say, a local bus route?

I don't believe many of them would do that. Why would they?

The result will likely be more of migration from the countryside to the towns. That has been happening for a while where I live (for other reasons) and rural areas suffer because of that. In my village we have lost the school and the village shop, plus there are numerous empty properties. Is that a likely future scenario for the UK?

 

[Sheffield Tony]

The result will likely be more of migration from the countryside to the towns. That has been happening for a while where I live (for other reasons) and rural areas suffer because of that. In my village we have lost the school and the village shop, plus there are numerous empty properties. Is that a likely future scenario for the UK?

I suspect it depends to what extent coronavirus - or the next one - shows us one of the bigger disadvantages of living all in big conurbations. And charging around the planet like blue-pineappled flies by all methods of transportation.

 

[RogerS]

The result will likely be more of migration from the countryside to the towns. That has been happening for a while where I live (for other reasons) and rural areas suffer because of that. In my village we have lost the school and the village shop, plus there are numerous empty properties. Is that a likely future scenario for the UK?

I suspect it depends to what extent coronavirus - or the next one - shows us one of the bigger disadvantages of living all in big conurbations.

I'll second that. Re Covid-19...seems to me that it's now out there and in the wild. Although the mortality rate is low, the one thing that the health authorities are keeping under wraps is that the morbidity is very high at 20%. This does not bode well.

And charging around the planet like blue-pineappled flies by all methods of transportation.

Are you suggesting that people give up their hols ? :shock:

 

[Tonyhaw]

I think it would be a bit premature to give up on hols entirely, no?

 

[AJB Temple]

To speculate on Beech's question about why are EVs so expensive...I suspect it is largely about volume. As demand grows and production lines switch over, prices are bound to come down in comparison to petrol and diesel vehicles.

It may be a factor that many EVs are fundamentally re-engineered as well (as opposed to clones of petrol) - often built largely of aluminium.

And the marketing costs are no doubt higher. In the case of Tesla we are also paying for the infrastructure implementation as well. I see that as perhaps the biggest brake on development of EV generally.

 

[Sheffield Tony]

They also use fair amounts of relatively uncommon materials - lithium, neodymium etc for powerful magnets. And probably a fair bit of copper. Compared to a smartphone at ~£1000, they start to look quite a lot for your money.

 

[nev]

They also use fair amounts of relatively uncommon materials - lithium, neodymium etc for powerful magnets. And probably a fair bit of copper. Compared to a smartphone at ~£1000, they start to look quite a lot for your money.

Which will become a darn sight rarer the more EVs that are produced.
Is there enough of these resources ?

A quick google (so it must be true)(at the time of publication) says that there are/were an estimated 1.3 billion cars on the road in the world and at the then current growth rates that number doubles every 20 years.
Of those the report put the total global EV carpark at 3.28 million vehicles, including full-electric, hybrid and plug-in hybrid models.

So that's a helluva lot more mining for those precious and rare materials currently required to build the energy sources for millions of EVs to replace the 1 billion ICE cars.

It would seem to me to be more logical to power vehicles with a material that is more abundant e.g. hydrogen but I understand that this requires a lot of energy to produce?
Maybe the hydrogen creation centres could be battery powered?
I'm beginning to see another meaning for the recycling sign now round and round we go.

 

[Trainee neophyte]

They also use fair amounts of relatively uncommon materials - lithium, neodymium etc for powerful magnets. And probably a fair bit of copper. Compared to a smartphone at ~£1000, they start to look quite a lot for your money.

Which will become a darn sight rarer the more EVs that are produced.
Is there enough of these resources ?

A quick google (so it must be true)(at the time of publication) says that there are/were an estimated 1.3 billion cars on the road in the world and at the then current growth rates that number doubles every 20 years.
Of those the report put the total global EV carpark at 3.28 million vehicles, including full-electric, hybrid and plug-in hybrid models.

So that's a helluva lot more mining for those precious and rare materials currently required to build the energy sources for millions of EVs to replace the 1 billion ICE cars.

It would seem to me to be more logical to power vehicles with a material that is more abundant e.g. hydrogen but I understand that this requires a lot of energy to produce?
Maybe the hydrogen creation centres could be battery powered?
I'm beginning to see another meaning for the recycling sign now round and round we go.

Everyone thinks of hydrogen as a fuel, but it isn't, at least not in the way that oil is a fuel. Oil eyou dig out of the ground, and if you use less energy digging it up than you get from it, then you are in a profit (as in you have gained added energy). Hydrogen doesn't exist in the wild as H2, because it escapes the atmosphere pretty quickly. Therefore all hydrogen for use as power must be crowbarred off some currently bonded hydrogen. Water can produce hydrogen gas using electrolysis, but it is not very efficient. You can get more hydrogen for less effort by stripping it from organic molecules - the current favourite is to use methane, I believe.

In other words, to get hydrogen, you must first expend quite a lot of energy. Now you have your hydrogen, what are you going to do with it? In its natural state it is not very dense (floats in air), so to have any hope of having enough gas to use as fuel you have to compress it, using energy. Then to have the problem of containing it. Hydrogen atoms are so small the hydrogen tends to sneak out between the molecules of the container. It also makes metals brittle. And it explodes at the drop of a hat. (https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/h ... challenges)

As an idea, hydrogen is brilliant: you burn it and get pure, distilled water! How fabulous is that! Unfortunately there are too many challenges to make it a viable "fuel", which is a shame. The big plus for hydrogen is that you can make it at home very easily using solar power.

There is a mad inventor on YouTube who fixed the storage problem - you just need to have a particle accelerator in your basement. I'll see if I can find the link...here we go: [youtube]Ytg23mDd1a4[/youtube]
If this chap is telling the truth, then hydrogen is completely viable, and in fact probably a better solution than anything else. However, it's a big if all around.

 

[Droogs]

Oh THE Bob Lazar who used to work on captured UFO anti gravity engines for the US DoD at area 51. Mind you he did build a rocket car in his garage, apparently how he got the area 51 job, to get to work in when he was at Los Alimos

 

[Just4Fun]

Some friends and I discussed the idea of towing a small petrol or diesel generator trailer on long journeys to extend the range of an electric vehicle. The reasoning is that many people only occasionally do long journeys so there is no need to lug the generator around most of the time, and the generator (unlike a normal car's engine) could always run at its most efficient rpm.

Now I see someone has actually tried that and concluded it is better to tow extra batteries, renting the trailers and changing them when a charge is required. Clicky

I suppose if you are driving past these rental sites anyway it may work, and it could be a nice little franchise operation at motorway services. For something only used occasionally a rental option probably makes a lot of sense, compared to everyone buying their own trailer. I think though that many people would prefer the flexibility of a generator, or possibly a "hybrid trailer".

 

[MusicMan]

Hydrogen is not an energy source, unlike nuclear, coal, wind or sunlight. It does not exist on its own in nature, but requires energy to extract it. At the moment the majority (95%) is made by reduction of methane by carbon, resulting in use of energy and emission of a lot of CO2, thus is fossil fuel reliant and is a greenhouse gas emitter. Electrolysis of water is often cited as a convenient and CO2-free source. To make 1 kg of hydrogen, about 40 KWH equivalent of electricity, takes 50 - 55 KWH of electricity. Thus you are much better off putting this directly in your car or home battery. And while the bulk of electricity is produced unsustainably and with CO2 emissions, this is even more stupid.
The situation is indeed changing rapidly at least in the UK and Western Europe, to renewable sources. When this is further along it could be sensible to introduce electrolytic hydrogen as a portable fuel. The use of hydrogen is in transporting energy, not in generating it.

There are two areas where this could be very appropriate. One is in domestic and industrial gas supply, which is a very large source of CO2 emissions nationally. The gas network is OK for hydrogen, in fact the old "town gas" was largely hydrogen (plus poisonous CO). It is also an enormous energy storage system, easily able to iron out peaks and troughs in electricity demand. In Germany it is estimated to be around 200,000 GW, i.e. about 100 power stations, and gas pipelines are cheaper than electricity cables for energy distribution.

The other area is in heavy movers: lorries, trains etc. It looks as if hydrogen storage (essentially highly explosive tanks!) plus fuel cells could be an economic solution, along with renewable energy to make the hydrogen. Quite probably ammonia could be a better solution with lower risks, but the economic and renewable argument is pretty similar. In contrast, battery technology still needs some development before it is appropriate and economical for these big applications, though development is now pretty rapid.

These all require further development of fuel cells. These do exist but are more expensive than IC engines at the moment. I expect this will change.

Whilst hydrogen can be used to fuel an IC engine, you immediately lose at least half the efficiency (hence range).

I expect to see battery technology dominant in small-to-medium size transport in the next 5 - 10 years, with hydrogen/ammonia competing in the heavier sector at first then competing at smaller scales later. It is a requirement of both that zero or very low emission energy sources first become the dominant national electricity supply.

The hydrogen distribution network is well established in gas mains, but local stations to compress/liquefy hydrogen and distribute it to the user are pretty complicated and very expensive at present (millions rather than tens of thousands). Far cheaper to build a charging network through the grid.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_economy, which is a very good read.

Looking forward to my Leaf coming next week!

 

[Trainee neophyte]

Looking forward to my Leaf coming next week!

You need to do this with it: https://www.thedrive.com/sheetmetal/143 ... ngol-rally

 

[beech1948]

The problem with this thread is that it ignores the needs of many of us. That is the 15,000 to 20,000 miles a year. Its alright for the virtue signalling low mileage driver to talk about the Leaf, Volkswagon e etc etc but these cars are merely LOCAL RUNAROUNDS with low overall ranges available. They are unsuitable for those of us who need to drive a considerable distance frequently.

EV vehicles are expensive eg Tesla S is around £80,000 for something that is less complex than an ICE car.

Range throttling is due to the car industry delivering too small batteries, restricting the range available to Joe Public and high prices are the result of marketing bulls**t where the maker believes the rubbish being put out.

It is not a battle between the Run Abouts and the Long Distance cars but about finance, overreached manufacturing costs and an inability to innovate.

The Honda e looks superb, has excellent facilities, COSTS 25% above other small runabouts and has a RANGE of only 120 ish miles. Maybe only 80 miles in cold weather. Its a toy it is not a real method of transport.

Frustrated.

Al

 

[RogerS]

Don't worry, Beech...there will soon be a charging point on every corner