Electric Vehicles

[shiftin_gear98]

Doesn't look as much fun though.

[Ruffy]

I'm late to the thread but I find this whole debate intriguing. What I find interesting is the polarised nature of the debate about EVs. 'Marmite'-esque, it seems you've got to love 'em or hate 'em.

Personally, I don't get it. I don't understand why electric cars are always styled to look futuristic. Electric motive power has been around for over a century and I think it's brilliant. Think trains, trams, trolley buses etc., back to the late 1800s many have been electric driven.

Electric drive control systems are ten-a-penny, with the right size hardware you can pretty much programme whatever power/torque curve you want, re-generative braking is available. I was dealing with it in factory production line environments over 20 years ago now. Surely the drive train stuff is well-proven tech and should be easy to implement.

For me the only evolving technology issue for cars/bikes is carrying the power source instead of having a mains connection - batteries. Which leads on to the weight, space, charging & infrastructure questions. Though knowing what I know about electricity supply industry, I don't think there's insumountable problems there. There are certainly some very savvy people working on it.

Then there's the cost of vehicles ... well beyond my pocket and likely to remain that way for a long time.

Why can't we like good examples of electric and internal combustion, like I do? I'll always love the sound and peculiarities of a good IC engine e.g. Subaru/VW/Porsche boxer, an American/Euro V8, a Suzuki V-twin etc. But quite frankly a decent electro-mechanical drivetrain should blow most of them away performance-wise and that's what I want.

I wonder how long before marketeers cotton on to the concept of selectable simulated engine types? (No longer will it just be eco/touring/sport/race mode!)

If I could afford the lump-sum cost to buy, I'd happily have an electric car and put up with the increased journey planning constraints to get over 'range-anxiety'. But I'd rather retro-fit and upgrade my current car than have any one of the crop of currently available new EVs (yes, including Tesla's). Boost my 162bhp 56-plate Subaru Legacy Estate to potentially behave like a Spec-B or Impreza WRX and I'd be happy. I simply don't want a complex future-concept cabin and the pretence that this is new tech - behind the wheel I'm a luddite old git who wants a traditional (but reasonably high performance) driving experience.

Just my two'penneth!

[embee]

I agree with Ruffy above, the use of battery vehicles in the right environment makes huge sense. However there is also a good argument for not getting rid of fossil fuel IC engines in certain applications, at least not as some blanket prohibition anyway.
The heavy goods transport business is a good candidate to continue with the diesel engine for some time to come. A Tesla battery weighs in at 500kg, a battery for a 40+tonne LGV would be in the region of 4tonnes to get a decent range, which means a loss of potential payload and thus increased number of vehicles (in theory). Also the charging power requirement for a truck park overnight would be monumental, you're into significant proportions of a power station output to charge a few dozen trucks in 8hrs. A large truck diesel being used on long-haul trips is pretty efficient (CO2 per tonne.mile), and the national generating efficiency would have to be improved very substantially to make significant gains in CO2, so why not just accept the use of diesel for LGVs for the forseeable future and concentrate on other more cost effective areas. Ban diesels from urban areas and use electric delivery locally, no issues there.
Again on the CO2 count, it's all well and good doing the sums for the UK, Scandinavia or France for example where we have relatively low CO2 electricity generation, but places like China, India, even Germany/Poland, have pretty high CO2/kWh electricity generation while still using coal, so they aren't saving CO2 with BEVs. It might well save toxic pollution in cities however, where it really is a horrendous problem, like Beijing etc.
The choice of energy source for vehicles really is only a matter of practicality, starting from scratch you probably wouldn't think that burning HC in a vehicle is a particularly smart idea, all that heat and fluids to deal with. Electricity is so much simpler if you can sort the storage/supply of energy to the vehicle (dodgems anyone?).

[SV650rules]

Fossil fuels freed humans from a subsistence existence at the mercy of nature. We should not be in a big hurry to ditch them. As embee says we need some common sense and practical thinking, a good point about weight of battery for an HGV cutting down payload, and unlike a fuel tank batteries do not get any lighter as you use the energy in them. Unfortunately politicians are not good at practical thinking, they skip from policy to policy without deep thought. A good example is wind power, quite a few times in last few months we have had days on end where it has been cold and still, and wind has contributed less than 2% to our grid, and at this time of year solar is useless, so gas, nuclear and biomass has been maxed out to cover the absence of renewables. Look at https://gridwatch.templar.co.uk site that shows both instantaneous and historical data for UK demand and the contribution of various forms of generation- it is shocking how variable wind and solar are, you obviously need to build far more renewables than you need, cross your fingers and hope that on bad days you will get something, while on a good day most of the fans on sticks will be idle, with the grid ( and the customer = you and me ) paying them NOT to generate....great innit....

[Luckypants]

I agree that renewables are very variable and cannot be relied on to be generating when there is demand. This week has been an absolute case in point - the windmills up the road from us have been stationary almost the whole time.

The challenge for the UK (and the world) is to find a way to store renewable energy when there is surplus and use that surplus when there is too much demand. For instance the wind still blows at night, but few people need the electricity it generates. Big batteries is one solution, just see the difference those made to the power grid in Western Australia. Pumped storage hydro is another, as these can come online rapidly. The big idea seems to be large grid interconnectors, so when we have no wind we get power from another country that has surplus and pay it back when the shoe is on the other foot. Norway are going for this in a big way to become the 'battery of Europe' by using excess energy from other countries to pump water uphill in pumped hydro schemes and then release it again when needed abroad.

We just need to get through the period of not enough renewable generation and infrastructure to make it work, where we are still reliant on CCGT electricity. I hope that the government's 10 year plan will achieve this - because no matter what you think, we cannot go on just burning stuff for transport and power.

[SV650rules]

I think it is funny the way greenies used to hate pylons and say they were ugly and demand to have the cables buried underground at 10 to 20x the cost, now they are quite happy to have ugly, noisy fans on sticks in most of the beautiful places in the UK.... and the dead birds at the bottom of every pylon. The people looking after the big focused mirror solar generators in California etc were intrigued to see puffs of flame and smoke in the air, turned out it was birds flying into the focused beams, some of them quite big birds like eagles, the heat just burned their feather off and cooked them - it seems whatever man does it is never harmless to something.

https://www.latimes.com/local/califo...nap-story.html

[Bibio]

i can see us drilling into the magma and using 'thermal energy' like Iceland does. the Pacific ring would be a perfect place for the likes of North and South America's and Japan, New Zealand and all those volcanic islands.


only problem doing the above is it not generating enough jobs like renewable does at the moment.


a car in the future is only going to be a rich persons luxuary and all the rest of us mortals will have to put up with mass transportation such as buss, shuttle and train and push bikes etc.etc.


btw what is going to happen to aviation and ocean going when the oil runs out? we had better start producing our own goods now so less reliance on such places as China........ make toys not guns.

[SV650rules]

Originally Posted by Bibio

btw what is going to happen to aviation and ocean going when the oil runs out? we had better start producing our own goods now so less reliance on such places as China........ make toys not guns.

We will have electric planes carrying so much battery weight that they can only carry two people, the pilot and one other - and they will only have a range of 50 miles.....

Oil will not run out anytime soon, but with governments thinking the way they do there is no incentive for companies to finance expensive exploration to find any more, you can make oil from coal anyway. I see a new coal mine has opened in Cumbria recently, and not before time, now all we need is someone amongst the snowflake / millennial generation willing to get their hands dirty - don't hold your breath - it they can't do it on a phone or laptop they don't even consider it.

My mate used to have a saying about greenies - he often said 'I hope they all freeze to death in the dark' - priceless.

[Grant66]

Originally Posted by SV650rules

I think it is funny the way greenies used to hate pylons and say they were ugly and demand to have the cables buried underground at 10 to 20x the cost, now they are quite happy to have ugly, noisy fans on sticks in most of the beautiful places in the UK.... and the dead birds at the bottom of every pylon. The people looking after the big focused mirror solar generators in California etc were intrigued to see puffs of flame and smoke in the air, turned out it was birds flying into the focused beams, some of them quite big birds like eagles, the heat just burned their feather off and cooked them - it seems whatever man does it is never harmless to something.

https://www.latimes.com/local/califo...nap-story.html

55millon birds killed annually by domestic cats (in UK). The best thing for the birds would be to burn cats to generate electricity


Sent from an S20 using Tapatalk with that kin cr4p blocked

[SV650rules]

Originally Posted by Grant66

55millon birds killed annually by domestic cats (in UK). The best thing for the birds would be to burn cats to generate electricity


Sent from an S20 using Tapatalk with that kin cr4p blocked

Agree entirely although cat owners would say their cat would not hurt a fly... a cat hardly likely to kill a hawk or eagle ( except a puma )..