Electric vehicles

[Sachakins]

Is that real world or claimed?

Claimed, so optimistic IMHO.

 

[Ozi]

I'm in no way doubting any of the figures above.... however something did whizz through my head....

Currently when you need to refuel you HAVE to go to a petrol station/supermarket. But... given than x% of homes have off street parking and will be able/want(?) to charge at home, how will this affect the amount/number of future charging/refueling stations.? Will there be a need for 8.5K 'fueling' stations if x% of charging is now done at home. And will the x% that DONT have off street parking/charging facility then have to travel further just to get charged up, making the 20 minute neighbourhood more of a reality.....

As it takes a lot longer to charge we will need more charging points than petrol pumps but on street charging is not a difficult thing to install, if you have room to park a car there is room for a charge point. Vandalism is the big issue here both of the charge points and peoples cables

 

[stuart little]

F150? Always thought these came out of Maranello !!!

 

[alz]

Why don't we go totally alternative. Up to a century ago steam cars were still popular.
So let's combine solar energy and steam in a high-tech version of the old Stanley steamer.
Had a drive in one once - and a Sentinel steam waggon - and they were amazing machines........

 

[Terry - Somerset]

Only in the last 75 years (3 generations) have most people ventured more than a few miles from home. There are exceptions - eg: military, crusaders, the wealthy doing grand tours, slave trade etc - but not the norm for most.

We have now become used to the freedoms that air and surface transport have delivered.

Perhaps recent history is the exception to "normal" human existence. Covid and lockdowns have been a huge problem for many, but it has reinforced the wisdom of having very local infrastructures and social relationships.

The 20 minute neighourhood may be the future reality - putting the genie back in the bottle is going to be a lot more difficult than releasing it in the first place!

 

[Jameshow]

I think covid has done a good job of limiting travel both international and domestic travel.

Many people are WFH taking breaks close home / holiday from home etc.

However much of shipping is home delivery which offsets this but surely more efficient than us all going to the shops. But I do miss a good independent DIY / ironmongers Wilko and the middle issue if Lidl!!!

Cheers James

 

[J-G]

Why don't we go totally alternative. Up to a century ago steam cars were still popular.
So let's combine solar energy and steam in a high-tech version of the old Stanley steamer.
Had a drive in one once - and a Sentinel steam waggon - and they were amazing machines........

It's a shame that the Stanley brothers decided that the near death of their driver in 1907 in speed trials on Ormond Beach meant that they were not prepared to continue development. They had previously been winning nearly every race that came available such that steam cars were often banned from competition.

 

[TominDales]

If there's a shortage of one chemistry, batteries will just be another. Fair chance there will be a sodium ion battery before lithium or cobalt are short. There's enormous incentive now to create a cheaper battery.

I think that is spot on prediction. Despite the recent demise of Oxis energy (sodium sulphur), other chemistries will come on stream. Its one reason iron Phosphate is still being produced as both iron and phosphorous are abundant. Sodium and sulphur are super abundant so probably will be the chemistry for solid state one day.

Cobalt is the biggest concern. Its quite rare and mainly mined in the DRG which is a major cause for concern.

Battery chemistry is constantly evolving and quite complex to follow. The chart below summarises the metal contents of various chemistries used in commercial cells.
Early EVs such as the Leaf were focused on good environmental chemistry, prismatic cell with low cobalt or zeros cobalt such as LMO (Lithium Manganese oxide) and LFP (Li, iron, phosphate) chemistries, these were green but low range - as the average American travels 35miles a day that did not seem to matter. see the middle two columns in 'figure 5' Then came Tesla!

The move for high cobalt containing batteries was driven by Tesla for a couple of historic reasons. Early EVs such as the Leaf and others used low cobalt or zero cobalt batteries LFP or LMO, environmentally a good solutions but had low range, due to low energy density of the chemistry. Tesla chose the 18650 standard Panasonic cylinder cells as they offered blistering power and long range ie 300 miles and good battery life and was a cheap cell. This cell was based on cobalt oxide chemistries LCO which very high proportioning of cobalt, LCO - Lithium Cobalt oxide. The chemistry is quite frisky so a sophisticated battery management system was developed to contain run away temperature excursions (ie fires) and extend battery life. See column 1 in fig 5, 60% of the 18650 is cobalt.

Some manufactures are intruding LFP again as its zero cobalt, but most are going for a high power cells but tweaking the chemistry to lower the cobalt content. In Panasonic/Tesla's case its NCA with N being Nickle and A being aluminium being their latest cell - fig5 far right reduction from 60% to 9% cobalt. In most other cases eg Nissan its NMC 811 where 8 is the part content of Nickle, 1 is Manganese, and 1 is cobalt so cobalt is 1/10 of the weight, second from the right, varoues NMC from 524 to the latest 811 hence the average of 19%, but it will drop to below 10% quite soon.

So we have seen, zero cobalt evolved to 60% cobalt for the early Teslas and now low cobalt cells over the past 10 years or so.

Manganese is cheap and abundant and Nickle is relatively plentiful and the basis of stainless steel production..

In the above chart the left hand pie is demand for nickle in 2019 and the right is projected demand in 2030, The red slide is steel whereas batteries is the purple slice, it grows but is not the dominant use for Nickle. My view is by 2030 other chemistries such as sodium sulphur will come on stream.

Lithium is not is short supply,
its available in many rock streams and in the Chilean salt lakes and is also available in sea water. Sodium is much cheaper to extract than lithium so will always be a potential replacement.

 

[TominDales]

As it takes a lot longer to charge we will need more charging points than petrol pumps but on street charging is not a difficult thing to install, if you have room to park a car there is room for a charge point. Vandalism is the big issue here both of the charge points and peoples cables

I imagine some petrol stations will go the whole hog and become conveyance stores, rest areas and fast food restraints. Many have a ff store attached. Petrol will be a minor part of the offer as time goes on. The rest will close.

 

[TominDales]

Big emphasis on EV in lots of the forums I look at.
I can't help thinking it's not that important really - it's just about losing our extravagant toys. They've only been with us on a massive scale since mid 1900s - two generations.
There were no cars on our street when I was little, unless a doctor or a taxi. In fact there was no tarmac at first (1947) it came later, along with concrete paving slab pavements. A marvellous playground - you could play hopscotch or marbles in the middle of the smooth road and thats where I learned to ride a bike - the cars came later and spoiled it all!
The alternative to cars could be the 20 minute neighbourhood, which is less of a radical innovation than a step back to earlier times. The 20-minute neighbourhood
The key word missing from climate change strategy chats is "regression". Innovative solutions are one thing but more to the point are the things we are going to have to give up

We naturally resist giving up our tech and comforts, so there is a resistance to this type of change. But as your rightly point out, we lost a lot with mass transportation. I remember our village with only a few cars and we played on our bikes in the road. From the moment we could walk we wandered the roads and my mum didn't worry at all, the only cycling we do with the family is off-road, too many friends have been mowed down - my cousin is in hospital since being knowned off his bike communing on Friday morning.
Those old pictures market squares with only one or two cars and lots of people on foot.

I do see change coming, as Ozi has said, in my case, our eldest son aged 22 has not taken his driving test, lives in a town and sees a car as an inconvenience. He socialises on-line and on phone a lot and they walk to the local pub etc, or get an uber.
Autonomous taxis will come in and enable shared car use that will further reduce the number of vehicle. (except for those that we use to ern money selling chargin capacity back to the grid - um) I've read about Paris re-purposing its underground car parks as car ownership has dwindled.

 

[Jacob]

....... we lost a lot with mass transportation. I remember our village with only a few cars and we played on our bikes in the road. From the moment we could walk we wandered the roads and my mum didn't worry at all, the only cycling we do with the family is off-road, too many friends have been mowed down - my cousin is in hospital since being knowned off his bike communing on Friday morning.
Those old pictures market squares with only one or two cars and lots of people on foot.
.......

We made a huge historic mistake with cars, which was to allow them to be kept on the road when not in use i.e. "parking". Those old photos also don't show parked cars, except those going about their business stopped temporarily.
Things would have been very different and the technology might have taken another turn altogether.

 

[Spectric]

I wonder how the richest people in the world (Oil) are going to take being side lined by EV vehicles, are all power stations in the future going to Oil fired and keep the $ rate high or will we embrace the Nuclear stations and stop the public debate of should we build them? Or is it just a case of not in my back yard?

Those rich people also have a lot of very hot dessert where they can use solar to generate their electricity and sell excess, but there will always be a market for oil as we need lubricants and the by products are used in so many other products, you cannot have some of them without producing petroleum. Nuclear fission has no future if we all want a guaranteed future because there is no such thing as safe, accidents do and will happen because thats what being human is all about. We are inherently prone to things going wrong, not an issue if the outcome is restricted to a small locality but very bad when that locality is the planet you live on. There was a program showing an American military plane at an airshow that suddenly lost control and crashed, reason was that they had forgot to put all the bolts back into a wing section during maintanance, there was that one where the pilot got half sucked out of a commercial airline, again because during a window replacement the wrong bolts were used and the list goes on showing that despite all the procedures and regulations someone will mess up. If you want to see a real example of what a muppet can do there is that solid fuel plant where the guy chucks a fag butt into something he should not have, that made a bang.
What is needed to allow the use of EV's is a radical shakeup of the very way we have lived and worked for many decades, rather than use the EV to be a replacement for ICE we need far greater change. We are like crazy ants all going in different directions to get to work, we need to address this urgently to minimise peoples commute and reliance on a car. How many people cross paths during their commute, one person from A to B whilst the other is doing the opposite.

 

[Spectric]

When we stop production of ICE vehicles there could be less demand for EV's simply because all the people now unemployed cannot afford one anyway, has anyone actually looked at how many jobs would go? An ICE is far more complex than an electric motor and has more sub systems and components so take the batteries out of the equation the EV must cost less to produce and should be cheaper to purchase.

 

[powertools]

When we stop production of ICE vehicles there could be less demand for EV's simply because all the people now unemployed cannot afford one anyway, has anyone actually looked at how many jobs would go? An ICE is far more complex than an electric motor and has more sub systems and components so take the batteries out of the equation the EV must cost less to produce and should be cheaper to purchase.

Vehicle manufactures must be loving all this. They will no longer have to produce engines with 100's of precision parts and will no longer have to do any more engine development. They will no longer have to produce gearboxes with 100's of precision parts also no clutch. They seem to be able to charge more money for less vehicle content and don't even to have to give any discount incentives as the government now seems to think that they should do that.

 

[Ozi]

Vehicle manufactures must be loving all this. They will no longer have to produce engines with 100's of precision parts and will no longer have to do any more engine development. They will no longer have to produce gearboxes with 100's of precision parts also no clutch. They seem to be able to charge more money for less vehicle content and don't even to have to give any discount incentives as the government now seems to think that they should do that.

Not while we have expectation of ever increasing features and functions, the vehicle I am currently working on has 40 ECUs one of which admittedly does run the IC engine so will soon be obsolete yet you would think of it as quite a basic car. If people expect autonomous driving aids and software updates over the air etc. if you want to know where available charging points are in real time it all comes at a cost. You may find it hard to believe but the profit margin on EVs is currently low at best and most are losing money, the forecasts are better in the future but lower than current vehicles.

 

[Spectric]

Vehicle manufactures must be loving all this. They will no longer have to produce engines with 100's of precision parts and will no longer have to do any more engine development.

Yes with an electric motor you have current, volts, torque and Rpm. An ICE has a very complicated calibration made more difficult because you need to meet Euro emission requirements, so who loses out?

Companies that manufacture: Castings for cylinder heads, blocks and ladder frames. Oil pumps, water pumps and fuel pumps. Engine management components and control modules. Forged components like con rods & camshafts. Gaskets and drive belts. All the fasteners and bearings.

The people who supply and maintain engine dynometer cells such as AVL, although a few could remain for characterisation of electric motors but full development cells are obsolete along with all the emision testing instrumentation from the likes of Horiba.

Most people involved with powertrain test and development from test cell operators all the way up the chain.

That is a lot of jobs and only for the engine, add on gearboxes, engine ancilaries such as alternator, starter motor and it grows and grows.

It could run into hundreds of thousands of jobs globally if you take into account everything involved and what do they now do, someone whose career has been in engine development and is say fifty years old?

 

[Spectric]

Not while we have expectation of ever increasing features and functions, the vehicle I am currently working on has 40 ECUs

Has to be landrover, or maybe Jag but I cannot see why any vehicle needs that many control modules unless they are all single purpose. Complexity is always a big factor in unreliability, automotive connectors are just as cheap as chips and you can see a big cost saving can be made here by combining more functions into fewer control modules, easily done these days with everything sitting on buses.

 

[hairy]

£134,290 93KWh, for a range of 241 miles on eco when this first drive started, maybe less when deploying 600hp Harry is good value I think

 

[JobandKnock]

So very affordable for the man on the street!

 

[Blackswanwood]

Yes with an electric motor you have current, volts, torque and Rpm. An ICE has a very complicated calibration made more difficult because you need to meet Euro emission requirements, so who loses out?

Companies that manufacture: Castings for cylinder heads, blocks and ladder frames. Oil pumps, water pumps and fuel pumps. Engine management components and control modules. Forged components like con rods & camshafts. Gaskets and drive belts. All the fasteners and bearings.

The people who supply and maintain engine dynometer cells such as AVL, although a few could remain for characterisation of electric motors but full development cells are obsolete along with all the emision testing instrumentation from the likes of Horiba.

Most people involved with powertrain test and development from test cell operators all the way up the chain.

That is a lot of jobs and only for the engine, add on gearboxes, engine ancilaries such as alternator, starter motor and it grows and grows.

It could run into hundreds of thousands of jobs globally if you take into account everything involved and what do they now do, someone whose career has been in engine development and is say fifty years old?

You are undoubtedly right that this means significant upheaval and transformation for vehicle manufacturing. I don’t see an alternative though as to not act leads to a far less appealing situation.