"Electric car range anxiety to be cured by battery that charges in five minutes"

I mean its bollox. He might as well have said

'Clearly, if vast areas of permafrost tundra become grass covered steppes, there is room for far more people to live there'

This is illogical extrapolation of low probability events to justify actions

If we don't address CO2 emissions we *may* end up *slightly* worse off.

But if we *do* address CO2 emissions to net zero we *WILL* end up

And get taken over by the Asians, who don't give a s*it about climate change anyway and need a place to put their populations

If the last 18 months have shown us anything, its that Brexit and Climate change are the least of our worries.

Well the changeover from horses and choochoos to cars took about 50 years and was equally massive.

As has been the impact of the internet in what - 30 years - its f***ed the high street completely. I think we will change, and we will have to change, but not along the lines dictated by stupid GreenThink and ArtStudents.

I would far rather let the market decide than being forced down a path on ideological grounds.

The fact that electric cars in real terms cost more than fuel cars is strong evidence that they are overall using more energy. Forcing scrappage of cars with useful working lives still in them is also an indication of more energy being used than is necessary.

If all this GreenCrap? was such a good idea why is it necessary to enforce its use by laws and by subsidy?

If there were a level playing field in energy, we would be 100% nuclear powered grid wise, and the cost of nuclear electricity versus fuel would already have ensured that most people used electric heating. As happened in France.

But a lot of people make a lot of money out of lobbying governments and setting up or usurping control of 'green' groups to ensure that the playing field resembles a ski slope.

Globally, energy is the biggest single market sector in the world. Civilisation depends on it.

Did you really expect anyone to tell you the truth about it?

Bless!

its not a little inconvenience when you die from lack of power in a dead hospital in winter

Fortunately neither are true, but what is more true is that the era of cheap fossil fuel is drawing to an end.

We have let the ArtStudents? design the future and its been an unmitigated and massively expensive mistake

Isn't it about time to pass it over to Engineers, who at least can Do Sums ....

• in-journey recharging.
• motorail

All of them. From the nuclear reactor powering the ferry, of course. All included in the price.

And while the ferry is docked, its powering all the charge points in the car queues.

Sold as a remedy for head lice. (Petrol was a waste product in the production of kerosene from crude oil.)

Quite. Interested to know many long distance *petrol* pipelines are in action around the world though.

Not that I was talking about this but are you saying it's the norm for petrol stations to be 'plumbed in' (other than those that are quite near terminals / refineries)?

I was actually saying that they haven't plumbed petrol to people homes (in the same way they have with water and gas (even then not in all locations) and after all these years?

Cheers, T i m

What was it sold for? To stick in your earhole?

Quite! ;-)

Cheers, T i m

But who can't organise a piss-up in a brewery, or myopic to alternative views.

Accountants can do sums too.

Having a funeral quickly after death dates from the days before refrigeration and also people travelling long distances to funerals. When they were a quick local affair.

No real reason to have them so soon today.

By the time we are forced to EVs, they will be available with the same range as any current diesel car. In other words, as far as any normal person would wish to travel in one day by car.

It may not matter with so many now being under water after the ice caps melt. ;-)

Some may just be planning for the 22nd century. But not many here.

When I were a lad, olive oil was kept in the medicine cabinet. ;-)

Quite. It is, after all, engineers who produced the myriad of different household power connectors across the world. And phone chargers, etc.

In an attempt to protect their own interests.

Protecting one's own interests will not solve climate change.

No,. if you were an engineer and no an ArtStudent you would do the research and the calculations and see that it was challenging, but not impossible at all, and the stupid person was in fact you.

Oh dear. semiconductors that function up to certainly 25kV as used on overhead electric trains that develop up to 50MW...are patently myth!

The sweet spot is probably around 5KV for charge CABLES. The battery can be whatever you want. Semiconductor inverters and regulators will feed the appropriate 4.2v to each and every cell.

As far as motors go, again the choice is almost limitless. lots of turns of thin wire or a few turns of thick wire - the motor doesn't care. A few turns of thick wire are good but that means you need very big control transistors. In reality Id guess at something between 100V and a KV.

In short the constraints are about optimising the following issues

1. Charge cables. Too low a voltage means a massively heavy cable. Too high a voltage makes safety a concern and also the ability to down convert using readily available cheap semiconductor inverters. If you limit current to 100A, then you need a KV for each MW of charge power.

1. Motor voltage. You probably again want to go high here, but without getting into super dangerous territory, mainly so that connecting wires and switching transistors have to handle less current. For a single motor/conventional transmission a 300bhp motor (225Kw) running at say

1. Battery voltage - well you make that the same as the motor voltage for simplicity. 250 cells in series nets you about a kV. It is really no big issue.

What it boils down to is this. Can you make a cable and a connector that will deliver a MW that is no worse to handle than a petrol pump hose and nozzle?

If we go to 5KV, we need 200A. IEEE tables suggests that needs around 70 sq mm of cable to not overheat, which means that two such, and an earth, would certainly fit inside something no bigger than a petrol hose. lets say the overall cross sections end up around 200 sq mm and the 'hose' is two meters long - that's 0.4 cu dm of copper weighing about

Not something you would want to lift unaided, but probably not much worse than a fuel nozzle on a big truck diesel pump

And in fact aluminium has a better current to weight ratio, so would probably be used instead.

Make the thing out of hundreds of small strands, and its flexible, cover it in silicone rubber for primary insulation, and a wire spiral and rubber overcoat - earthed for extra protection - and you have a MW charge lead.

The plug and socket would be an interesting challenge - able to be connected in less than a second by a complete numpty with no possibility of wrong insertion, inherently lockable and capable of doing 200A.,..and insulated to 5Kv.

I think id put some simple robotics in the charger side that rotated things to alignment, wiped all the contacts carefully before clamping them hard and then monitored the temperature in the whole shebang, and couldn't be pulled loose without shutting off power first

I don't see any serious problems in any of this. Its not radical technology, its just coming up with a standard plug/socket/voltage/current that is *good enough*.

And then having the cars own electronics down convert that to suit the battery in use.

Sadly its already been achieved. Sub 5 minute charging has been done in the lab,. and sub 3 minute discharging is reality on every single flight battery I have bought this year

This is not pie in the sky, It's achievable - albeit at a cost and weight and lifetime penalty.