Electric vehicles

[Garden Shed Projects]

How do you make them safe at low weight? In a crash, that is. Once you get on the highway, low weight doesn't really make much difference. One would wonder why we don't stamp dimples in car body parts yet as that absolutely increases cruise efficiency.

Safety comes from design and the use of exotic materials, carbon fibre, bonded aluminium and such. Light cars that are safe are around already. Take the Smart roadster from a few years ago, great idea. Small safe roadster, light in weight small efficient engine spoilt by horrible gear box.
Give the design to Ferrari with a price point north of £150k and what would you get?
The technology in these high end cars is utilised to carry around 5 litre v8’s leather seats ac. If a car was designed from a clean sheet of paper to be a light weight simple car, a Lotus Elise springs to mind, it may be possible.
They do build specials like club sports and stradale but they are based on the “standard”car which needs to carry all the luxury items.
A light car with any power train, be it EV, hydrogen or ICE would still perform better than one that was heavier.
In a lot of cases this technology starts as pie in the sky thinking and is expensive but the more technology is implemented the cheaper it becomes.

 

[TominDales]

Just a thought on tge 2025 ban.

How will the government deal with their vehicles, ie Bullet proof limousines, high security vehicles for likes of diplomats, royalty, also those that feel the need for attack proof cars.

Will they extend the ICE ban to the likes of new military vehicles, police vehicles, emergency vehicles, ambulances etc.

Would love to see the performance of a challenger tank on batteries....

Also is the proposed ban on ICE to include motorcycles, boats, barges.

What about generators, construction and agricultural vehicles and machinery.

Think that a 250 tonne crane lift going to be unlikely for years to come.

Also changing over the entire public transport fleet, busses, trains, ferry boats.

Good question.
There is a huge amount going on in this area.

The MOD pouring money into this area. They have loads of cells on the body, want to upgrade but seriously they are looking at EVs and E ships. Army vehicles adopt electric technology
Electric vehicles offer military advantages, quieter and less IR emissions means they are harder to detect by enemy.

Port of London has a major project to convert its fleet to EV, same in Amsterdam. Ferries are a good start as they go back to a dock. Lloyds shipping have international programmes looking at long haul shipping - that is a major challenges.http://www.pla.co.uk/Port-of-London-Authority-to-more-than-halve-emissions-by-2025

Off road - interestingly for JCB and Komatsu etc, EVs have enabled them to introduce new products as they are great for enclosed spaces such as tunnels. But the extra power is enabling new desisgnes, a Newcastle company Hyperdrive is developong cells systems for these applications. Hyperdrive Innovation Limited | High Performance Battery Energy Storage Systems

EVs are naturally very powerful, but range is an issue. The UK has some good companies in this area such as Delta motorsport. Delta The motorsport sector is pioneering high power EVs Notre sure about specialist vehicle such as 250 tonne crane but its only a matter of time.

Of all of these applications you list, long distance shipping is the most challenging. How to store that much energy. It could be hydrogen or a sustainable fuel rather than a battery.

 

[selectortone]

If a car was designed from a clean sheet of paper to be a light weight simple car, a Lotus Elise springs to mind, it may be possible.

It exists. The Mazda MX-5. Best selling roadster of all time. They've since loaded it up with extras like aircon etc, but the mk1 was pretty much that. I can see an electric version in that model's future.

 

[D_W]

Safety comes from design and the use of exotic materials, carbon fibre, bonded aluminium and such. Light cars that are safe are around already. Take the Smart roadster from a few years ago, great idea. Small safe roadster, light in weight small efficient engine spoilt by horrible gear box.
Give the design to Ferrari with a price point north of £150k and what would you get?
The technology in these high end cars is utilised to carry around 5 litre v8’s leather seats ac. If a car was designed from a clean sheet of paper to be a light weight simple car, a Lotus Elise springs to mind, it may be possible.
They do build specials like club sports and stradale but they are based on the “standard”car which needs to carry all the luxury items.
A light car with any power train, be it EV, hydrogen or ICE would still perform better than one that was heavier.
In a lot of cases this technology starts as pie in the sky thinking and is expensive but the more technology is implemented the cheaper it becomes.

There must be no real market interest. There were some lighter stripped down vehicles offered here in the states for a 10 year or so period. Ultimately, their sales numbers dropped in favor of more complicated cars and that was the end of that.

 

[TominDales]

I'm sorry if this has been debated before, but, why the **** are we (society) not pursuing Hydrogen powered vehicles more? Yes the fuel cells are expensive to produce, but that cost would diminish with mass production. The range of a HPV vehicle is more akin to an ICE. 5 minute fill up and the only by-product is water. To re-battery an EV is the best part of £10K and the environmental cost is huge. I used an HV taxi the other month and it was great. The driver said the only downside was there were only a couple of refuelling stations around.

Yes we have, in summary, hydrogen is hard to handle, compress, store and burn. Batteries are about 95% to 97% efficient at charging and discharging energy whereas electrolysers are only 80% efficient and fuel cells about 65% so there is a big efficacy loss. So for short range applications EV wins out. For longer range their is not such a clear cut view and Hydrogen, SAF (sustainable or bio fuels) etc are still being developed. As usual the UK having been a leader is behind the fuell cell curve. This table compares ICE with EV and fuel cell quite well. As you can see, EVs win out on efficiency and as you point out as the manufacturing costs come down they will also win out on cost vs ICE and hydrogen.

Fuel cells make sense for very long distance such as long haul shipping, or direct burn hydrogne or even fuel cells using amonia as a hydrogen carrier. For cars EVs are the most economic. Scania have development programmes fro large trucks in EVs and fuel cell trucks running side by side, but are now investing increasingly in EVs at the expense of fuel cells due to better progress on high power EVs.
https://www.scania.com/uk/en/home/e...s/2020/09/scania-electric-truck-launches.html

 

[Spectric]

They are actually making the problems with EV's worse because they are trying to run before they can walk. The ICE has been around about 200 years in which time it has evolved to what we see now, for better or worse. They are trying to instanty replicate this with an EV rather than step back and accept that it will have to start with a lower top speed and less power but that could then deliver the range, overtime it will evolve and become what they are trying to achieve overnight.

 

[TominDales]

The future of the motor industry is hydrogen. Jaguar made a huge mistake investing in all Electric whereas smart trade is already gearing up for water power. Interestingly the new all electric jag is made in Austria and they just put the badge on it when it gets to the uk- it still can't go far without having to be charged but goes very very fast they say. Grids are being made for roads so you drive over them to charge your vehicle a bit like how you can charge your phone by placing it on top of a charging pad. The industry is charging relatively high prices for new vehicles that will have a limited life time it seems. Water powered cars are currently a strong point with Asian car makers, the uk needs to speed up. Getting info from the actual makers can take you down the right road... with water power.

JLR and the APC chose EV as its investable at the time (2010-2012). Hydrogen wasn't developed enough. In Germany and Japan they are much more advance with hydrogen for transport. However with hind sight this was not a bad decision as EVs are developing faster than hydrogen. There are a lot of difficult distribution problems to overcome with hydrogen. It looks increasingly that it will compete at the very long range market and EVs will take over car, van and most trucks.
Although a lot of JLR production is overseas the design and R&D in based in the UK which is the most labour intensive and value add bit. They employ 39,0000 to make 550,000 units in 2019 across several sites including Halewood, Castle Bromwich, Solihull and then several overseas plants cf Nissan in Sunderland who assemble 350,000 cars in Sunderland with a workforce of just 9000.

When JLR switched to aluminium body panels, they didn't work closely with their UK supply chain and made the change just as the Aluminium smelters were closing in the UK, also GKN had not invested in their Telford pressing facility so could not switch to ali, so JLR had to switch Germany for the aluminium pressing. Since then an increasing amount of their cars are made overseas. The Brexit trade deal with the EU and US demands at least 50% UK hoe production to qualify for tariff free access to those markets, so there is a scramble to onshore more of the car, especially the battery and its chemicals, as currently the average UK content about 44%, they have just 2 or 3 years to get to 50% under the Brexit rules of origin deal.

 

[TominDales]

I am always a little suprised that high end car manufacturers don’t have a line of light weight efficient vehicles. The likes of Ferrari, Maclaren etc. don’t follow Caterham or Arial and create vehicle that are designed from the ground up as light weight, thus efficient vehicles. It isn’t like there are cost constraints within there markets and using modern materials and engine designs they could create something really special.
A 500kg Ferrari with a 1.6 litre V6 any one.
The halo effect of these vehicles could drive a renewed interest in lightweight simplistic vehicles for the mass market.
Colin Chapman had it right. Design the car and then add lightness.

The Caterham and Arial atom are really for enthusiasts for safety reasons, you need to where a helmet etc and would not come out of a high speed crash well.
However you touch on a long running debate about light weighting in the auto and aerospace industries.

Maclaren is in fact highly advanced from a weight point of view employing aircraft style technology to build carbon fibre moncocks. Its about 2/3 the weight of a steel equivalent but still has a protected shell for he passengers. you are correct that in general auto companies design the car and then apply lightweighting, whereas for aerospace the two issues are linked in ever decreasing cycles, ie a lighter wing means a smaller engine which means small brakes which make the whole plane lighter which means a smaller engineer etc, its a very complicated holistic equation.

There are two schools of thought in auto/aero lightweighting. 1) will auto absorb tech top-down technology from the aerospace industry (which is expensive) or go for bottom up low cost car designs and then fix the weight issues. At the moment the money is on the later, but with a revolution in small planes and drones there may be more cross over between the two engineering approaches. Similarly will aerospace start to go for lower cost standard carbon fibres etc to drive down costs and use better computer designs to overcome the high tech performance loss in choosing more standard materials? Its a very live issue.

 

[Just4Fun]

It exists. The Mazda MX-5. Best selling roadster of all time.

OK, This is from my memory of a conversation some years ago, in which a friend described a magazine article to me. So an old memory of secondhand information; I may have some details wrong but the essence is correct I think.

Anyway, apparently a motoring magazine got hold of 50 so-called sports cars ranging from the mundane to supercars. They took them to Silverstone along with 50 drivers ranging from a 17-year old who had just passed his driving test to a professional circuit racer. Each driver did one timed lap in each car and for each car they calculated an average time. The Mazda MX-5 turned out to be the fastest on average. Sure, the professional was much faster in a Ferarri but most people couldn't drive a Ferarri quickly. The Mazda was easy to drive and most people could pedal it along at a respectable speed the first time they jumped in it.

 

[CornishWoodworker]

I've read it takes about 100kw to produce 22kw of end power in a hydrogen powered car when you factor in production to the green hydrogen state and subsequent losses through to tyres turning.
Hardly Green.
Still hopefully it will get better.
Remember , whichever power source is used, it will eventually be taxed to the Max.

 

[selectortone]

OK, This is from my memory of a conversation some years ago, in which a friend described a magazine article to me. So an old memory of secondhand information; I may have some details wrong but the essence is correct I think.

Anyway, apparently a motoring magazine got hold of 50 so-called sports cars ranging from the mundane to supercars. They took them to Silverstone along with 50 drivers ranging from a 17-year old who had just passed his driving test to a professional circuit racer. Each driver did one timed lap in each car and for each car they calculated an average time. The Mazda MX-5 turned out to be the fastest on average. Sure, the professional was much faster in a Ferarri but most people couldn't drive a Ferarri quickly. The Mazda was easy to drive and most people could pedal it along at a respectable speed the first time they jumped in it.

They are so easy to drive they let 70 year olds have them

 

[selectortone]

I've read it takes about 100kw to produce 22kw of end power in a hydrogen powered car when you factor in production to the green hydrogen state and subsequent losses through to tyres turning.
Hardly Green.
Still hopefully it will get better.
Remember , whichever power source is used, it will eventually be taxed to the Max.

Do we really want to continue the fuelling model of needing to drive to centralised facilities storing large quantities of volatile fuel - even more volatile in the case of hydrogen?

 

[D_W]

OK, This is from my memory of a conversation some years ago, in which a friend described a magazine article to me. So an old memory of secondhand information; I may have some details wrong but the essence is correct I think.

Anyway, apparently a motoring magazine got hold of 50 so-called sports cars ranging from the mundane to supercars. They took them to Silverstone along with 50 drivers ranging from a 17-year old who had just passed his driving test to a professional circuit racer. Each driver did one timed lap in each car and for each car they calculated an average time. The Mazda MX-5 turned out to be the fastest on average. Sure, the professional was much faster in a Ferarri but most people couldn't drive a Ferarri quickly. The Mazda was easy to drive and most people could pedal it along at a respectable speed the first time they jumped in it.

Was this a new review? The older Ferrari's without all of the assistive stuff are complained about by professional reviewers.

 

[Just4Fun]

Was this a new review?

It was new at the time
As I wrote in my post, this was some years ago, so to us now it is an old article. Perhaps things have changed, I don't know.

 

[John Brown]

This looks good:

Funny.

 

[D_W]

It was new at the time
As I wrote in my post, this was some years ago, so to us now it is an old article. Perhaps things have changed, I don't know.

Only curious because of all of the driving assistance added to cars now. I think they try to make the supercars safe for novices, which i find boring. My days of car magazines were in the 1990s and I can absolutely believe a mild sports car back then could've been driven faster than an f40.

 

[TominDales]

Scania have been running fuel cell and BEV programme for trucks. They announced earlier this year that they are increasing focus on EVs.
Here is a benchmark they have done on BEV trucks vs diesel. Seems in line with Studies on the Nissan Leaf for cars. The pay-back depends on the source of electricity as with other studies but the figures look good. Headline is 20,000 miles (33,000km) to 42,000 miles needed to recoup the carbon cost of manufacture.
This is an industry study so not independent, but Scania are a reputable brand, so its likely to have been well researched.

https://www.scania.com/content/dam/...cycle-assessment-of-distribution-vehicles.pdf

 

[Ozi]

https://energypost.eu/hydrogen-fuel-cell-cars-competitive-hydrogen-fuel-cell-expert/
It appears that as time passes, fcv gets less likely, not more.

I have said it before but Toyota got 1003 km out of one charge with a Mirai on the public road. It wasn't a standard car but they get 650 km from those. Making hydrogen from gas is a disaster environmentally but no one is suggesting that as a solution. Hydrogen from electrolysis of sea water can make sense, not as the main reason for installing turbines but as a by product from those times turbines produce power in excess of demand. Being able to sell this by product increases the generating capacity which can be economically installed, without it we are nearing the point at which additional wind power is not cost effective yet we do not have enough at times of high demand or when the wind don't blow. It is one additional means of storing renewable energy, we are going to need others, huge banks of batteries are being installed and everyone will have heard of pump storage but looking for one answer to the whole problem is unlikely to be the best way forward and as many have said we are going to see a lot of upheaval and almost certainly a drop in living standards measured by current standards.

As far as refueling hydrogen cars goes it does not have to be a nightmare, imagine filling your petrol tank with Jerry cans and a funnel. Once the infrastructure is in place it will be just as simple as it needs to be.

On the subject of safety I have read the crash standards and other safety standards relating to hydrogen tanks in road vehicles, there through and I would be happy to be on the road with these and equally happy to drive one if things go this way. Far happier than I currently am breathing diesel fumes.

The best study I have seen to date suggested about 11% of road transport could economically be hydrogen powered, the truth is we don't really know yet where the balance will end up. At one point the CEGB ran a study which proved you could not run the national grid in a stable manor with more than 10% renewable energy, in the last 12 months we did a lot better than that.

 

[Jacob]

The loss if personal powered transport is no big deal. Boys toys really. We would survive!
What about the important Climate change issues?

 

[D_W]

I have said it before but Toyota got 1003 km out of one charge with a Mirai on the public road. It wasn't a standard car but they get 650 km from those. Making hydrogen from gas is a disaster environmentally but no one is suggesting that as a solution. Hydrogen from electrolysis of sea water can make sense, not as the main reason for installing turbines but as a by product from those times turbines produce power in excess of demand. Being able to sell this by product increases the generating capacity which can be economically installed, without it we are nearing the point at which additional wind power is not cost effective yet we do not have enough at times of high demand or when the wind don't blow. It is one additional means of storing renewable energy, we are going to need others, huge banks of batteries are being installed and everyone will have heard of pump storage but looking for one answer to the whole problem is unlikely to be the best way forward and as many have said we are going to see a lot of upheaval and almost certainly a drop in living standards measured by current standards.

As far as refueling hydrogen cars goes it does not have to be a nightmare, imagine filling your petrol tank with Jerry cans and a funnel. Once the infrastructure is in place it will be just as simple as it needs to be.

On the subject of safety I have read the crash standards and other safety standards relating to hydrogen tanks in road vehicles, there through and I would be happy to be on the road with these and equally happy to drive one if things go this way. Far happier than I currently am breathing diesel fumes.

The best study I have seen to date suggested about 11% of road transport could economically be hydrogen powered, the truth is we don't really know yet where the balance will end up. At one point the CEGB ran a study which proved you could not run the national grid in a stable manor with more than 10% renewable energy, in the last 12 months we did a lot better than that.

We have nat. Gas fill stations for cars here. I understand that in order to have a setup for nat gas, the installation cost is a half million extra or so. Consequently, there aren't many. A compressor in home to fill the car off of residential nat gas is about $10k.

The infrastructure to compress it won't be cheap and probably not that reliable. Electric cars will charge at short intervals by then.