Quote:
Originally Posted by Luckypants
The national grid have said on multiple occasions that the grid has the capacity to cope. Especially so as most people will charge overnight when load on the grid is much lower. e.g. https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories...ehicles-busted
What is the concern here? Most EV manufacturers offer an 8 year warranty on the battery / drive train. Charging is up to 350Kw now (Taycan) although rare. Ranges up to 400 miles on a charge are now available.
Batteries are recyclable and all the lithium can be recovered and re-used. So while it is a finite resource, we should be OK. The use of cobalt in EV batteries is going down as we find new chemistries and will be eliminated very soon. The cobalt is also recoverable.
There is no doubt Tesla leads the way in mass market battery technology but others are catching up. If the 'glass battery' can be proved and produced in volume, it will change everything.
UK energy mix is heavily reliant on fossil fuels, but not as heavily as people think. The UK has not burned any significant coal to generate electricity since February and that's a good thing as coal is the dirtiest and least efficient fuel. Wind and Solar now account for the majority of power in low demand periods. The government's Green Strategy announced yesterday will direct a lot of investment into getting the green power up towards 100%. A usefule link to see how we are doing. https://gridwatch.co.uk/ |
Quote:
Originally Posted by Luckypants
|
It does say they aren't quite there yet, but sounds optimistic!
Not just grid supply, I was thinking if every house hold quadruples their draw and does it at once, when they get home at 7pm the street wiring might not be up to it .
Quote:
|
What is the concern here? Most EV manufacturers offer an 8 year warranty on the battery / drive train. Charging is up to 350Kw now (Taycan) although rare. Ranges up to 400 miles on a charge are now available.
|
Lots of things, mainly the time taken to charge. If I'm driving to Scotland and I run out of fuel I pull over and fill up for 15 minutes, I ideally don't want to be waiting 6hrs for a charge. While you can plan trips but life doesn't always work like that + couriers/taxis (although they may be automated soon!) etc time is money. And then general performance, cost, weight amount of materials needed to produce them. Though I don't think they are too far off this. While I like the idea of them,I wouldn't want to depend on one yet.
I think it would be cost prohibitive for a lot of people too. I'm not saying anyone can buy a Tesla in the first place, but at £5k for a battery every 8 years, buying a second hand one is not an option for a lot of people with the curent tech. I bought my car for about that 11 years ago, it's done 200k - I've literally bought nothing other than tyres, springs, bushes and pads & disks for it - not even a clutch which would be a few hundred...but it's not thousands. Unless of course I'd save 5k on fuel!
That said I'm optimistic batteries will improve enough in the next few years, I was more concerned about infra.
Quote:
Batteries are recyclable and all the lithium can be recovered and re-used. So while it is a finite resource, we should be OK. The use of cobalt in EV batteries is going down as we find new chemistries and will be eliminated very soon. The cobalt is also recoverable.
There is no doubt Tesla leads the way in mass market battery technology but others are catching up. If the 'glass battery' can be proved and produced in volume, it will change everything.
|
This is what I'm hoping for. I hadn't thought about lithium recovery, that's a biggy,
Quote:
|
UK energy mix is heavily reliant on fossil fuels, but not as heavily as people think. The UK has not burned any significant coal to generate electricity since February and that's a good thing as coal is the dirtiest and least efficient fuel. Wind and Solar now account for the majority of power in low demand periods. The government's Green Strategy announced yesterday will direct a lot of investment into getting the green power up towards 100%. A usefule link to see how we are doing. https://gridwatch.co.uk/
|
That is useful. Mine is 100% green at the mo, I was worried that may not be possible to retain at peak hours with leccy cars
Edit: sorry I read that as 8 year life expectancy rather than warranty. Have they revised that, I was under the impression they only lasted 5-10 years. + If the link you posted is right it probably would save me about that much on fuel.