Electric cars.

[Doctor Drivel]

Any data to back this wild allegation?

[Doctor Drivel]

** snip senility **

Sad but true.

[AJH]

I guess too much time has passed since but I said I'd revisit it.

I take the view that wealth and energy consumption go hand in hand, Peter Parry has pointed out that learning to use a resource more efficiently has not, so far, conserved it in any way, simply it becomes more available for use.

So the bit of the thread I was interested in was the relative "fuel efficiency" of centrally generated electricity verses burning the fuel at point of use.

I had calculated a figure of 0.63kWhr(t)/km for a diesel car achieving

50MPG, you had suggested that a battery-electric vehicle might achieve 0.062kWhr(e)/km. Your later post worked out at 0.217kWhr(e)/km. If the diesel had a similar loss per km then it suggests the ic conversion efficiency would be about 34%! Interesting to me is whether this is because the battery powered vehicle is inefficient, has too much mass or lacks regenerative charging as we had both assumed the diesel would be about 15% overall conversion of fuel to distance.

AJH

[nightjar]

You really should learn to understand that other people do not necessarily share your tastes.

As I rarely keep a car for more than three years, that is entirely irrelevant to any choise I would make.

The motor may be quieter than an IC engine, but the tyres will still make the same noise and that is a significant proportion of the noise produced by modern cars.

What I am saying is that, contrary to what you claim, a lot of people don't care about whether something as an eco product or not.

That is not a contradiction of the point I made. It is simply an example of the same sort of consideration being given as to why not to buy.

Standing and filling a vehicle for 15 minutes would require a fuel tank with at least 1050 litres capacity.

Colin Bignell

[Roger]

The message from "nightjar" contains these words:

Or a complete moron attempting to fill an average sized tank. :-)

[Matt Beard]

Hey, I resent that!

I own a large Skoda diesel and it keeps track of the mpg figure for each trip and since bought. The overall figure is just a little under

60mpg and that includes quite a bit of bat-out-of-hell style driving as well as pootling around the shops and some long motorway trips. A few times I have tried to see what sort of figure I can get on a single trip and have managed 70-80mpg over about 30 miles.

[nightjar]

There is that, although I had visions of him opening the car door and getting drenched as a wave of petrol swept out.

Colin Bignell

[Doctor Drivel]

"Roger" wrote Rogerness in message news: [e-mail]...

Yes, that was Rogerness.

[The Natural Philosopher]

It is, without huge cheap electricity supplies, and as long as huge cheap coal supplies exist.

Once again, the balance of materials to use is a function of what is plentiful cheap and good enough...

In a nuclear electric age, aluminium might well be cheaper...

[The Natural Philosopher]

Wellin winter I heat my WHOLE HOUSE - 2000 sq ft, using a 10KW boiler.

So don't tell me a car needs the same.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Not quite. Electric cars are mechanically simpler than IC ones. There are less parts and less moving parts.

They should be less in need of servicing, and have a higher life expectancy.

They are intriniscally clean at the point of use, so even though issues of what to burn where for the lecetricirty etc are relevant, in ternms of local pollyion, they are 100% clean.

The fuel costs at CURRENT TAXATION LEVELS makes them extremely low cost to run.

The ONLY downsides are

- current extremely high cost of batteries of suitable specification

- current extremely high development costs to get to mass production

- without non fossil fuel power stations, no overall carbon footprint reduction.Or only marginal.

- some issues of safety.

- recharge times

Apart from those specific issues, they are *better in almost every way * to any normal road going car. I can't yet see an electric car winning leMans tho...:-)

However if you peek into the future, to a world where fossil fuel is 3-10 times the price it is now..but non fossil fuel electricity - especiallly off peak - is actually similar to now...you see a very different picture. Disreagrde te Prius - its a crap gimmick - and look to situations where teh adavantages o battery electric outweigh the disdvantages.

We have always had milk floats. Short range urban delivery vehicles. Thats negates the charging disadvantages, and the quiet clean bit is good for a delivery vehicle, as is the stop startt nature of the usage profile.

I would say that 'second car' - the parent-and-child supermarket car, that does maybe 20-100 miles in a day, is also a candidate.

I'd say urban ranspirt iof many sorts - scooters, taxis, buses - s alos a place where the low power requirements or general stop strat nature of te driving favour electric.

BUT its all dependant on what the whole country thinks is the right energy policy. I am convinced that it should be a mix of nuclear electric, wind and other aletrnaticve power, and biofuels. If the government (and Europe) taxes fossil fuels, to weigh against the essential pollution costs that they engender, then we have a situtuation where te electric battery car cbecomes teh prime and most cost effective way to get persponal short distance transport..with biodiesels taking up the load on longer hauls.

Have a look here

some more opinions as well.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I beg your pardon? R & D does NOT equal energy use. R & D is very small scale production by a few expensive individuals. Expensive not because THEY use energym but because they are probably taking out orivate pebnsions,

Utter rubbish., I take it you are not in any sense an engineer.

The high cost of R&D is labour cost. Labour does not equal energy use. Especually foossil fuel use. Humans live on biofuels mainly, and wheter or not they are siting at computers spouting rubbish they have no understanding of, or working in a lab fiddling with plates of alumnnium and organic solvents, they still have to be fed.

If you want to save energy, as YOU would have it described, I suggest you hang yourself now.

How little you understand of market forces. Things are expensive because they do something so specal that people are willing to pay a premium, and too few people know how to make them to satisfy demand.

How come someone can sell a 200 quid Dysion vaccum cleaner that is not as effectivce as one costing 50 quid?

As well.

They are.

Energy use is not te same as energy of manufacture for one thing. Lifetime comes into it as well.

The fisrt computers cost several million to deliver less processing power than you could get out of a mobile phone today.

Atre you really telling me that te first IBM mainframe took a few hundred thousand barrels of oil to priduce? I hink not.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Look at te poiwer to weight ratio of electric motors, and come back and say that again with facts to back it up.

And look at the many many cars and vans that do not employ IRS, even today.

If public perception of such a cloudy issue as roadholding were a real factor in car purcahsing, no one woyld ever buy a McPherson strut car ever again.

However, its probably the most common front suspension in use today.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Yup. The 217Wh per MILE (not kilometer) figure was actual test data.

If you followed all the posts, the answer I finally came out with is that a good diesel - probably around 15% average thermodynaic efficinecy, peaking at best at 40% on long low throttle cruises, was very comparable to a

50-60% efficient power station, with transmission and charge/recharge and motor losses in a battery powered car.

I.e. from the eco point of view, in fuel efficiency there is not a lot in it.

Of course if you can solidify te carbon dioxide emmissions from the power ations and bury them, that may be easier from a global warming piiunt of view.

I apologise for all the mistakes in the calculations...all done on the back of an envelope in spare minutes...

..the overriding concluions are that if we had non fossil fuel electrical power, and cheap lithium batteries, we could indeed build a car that would equal in every respect a decent diesel, out perform a petrol, and contribute no C02 to the atmosphere.

As long as we are stuck with burning fossil fuels though, it has little advantage over a diesel except in niche areas.

[Nick Finnigan]

Nope.

Yes you do. How powerful is the heat exchanger on your Jaguar?

How long does/did your Landrover take to heat up in winter?

Because it can't possibly be.

I read what you carelessly typed: no cost benefit, nor range, nor weight, nor CO2 nor any pollution benefit. Where is there an advantage?

[Matt]

Whether you choose to believe it or not, that is the typical output. Remember that most of the time in a car without the benefit of air conditioning (to remove moisture) that unless the humidity level is very low recirculation cannot be used without steaming up the windows. So the heater has to be capable of taking in air that could be sub zero and heating it up to 20+ deg C in a single pass, many manufacturers heating systems are designed to work down to extremely low temperatures (-30 deg C is not unusual) Obviously in a climate like Southern California you fit a tiny heater to your electric car and get away with it. Move to the Great Lakes and when it comes to winter you have big problems. Just casual observation would show that the heating matrix used on a car is many times bigger than that fitted to a 2kW kickspace for instance, and running with an inlet temperature of around 95 deg C.

Also have you ever looked at the heat losses in a car? even Prescott's Jags would struggle to meet the "building regs" of 100 years ago :-)

[Dave Plowman (News)]

The heat losses in a car are great. Haven't you noticed just how fast they cool down when you stop them on a cold day? Also, there's the need to get them up to a comfortable temperature quickly - your house could take an hour or so in the morning starting from a much higher temperature. The inside of a car will be at ambient temperature after an overnight stop.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Which cars?

[Doctor Drivel]

The performance is also the sound, vibration and harshness, which equals smoothness. Less stress on drivers. Diesels are very noisy inside and out, being an environmental problem. Then the reliability and simplicaity of an eelctric, beats any IC engine hands down.

It has an endless list of advantages over an agricultural sounding and feeling diesel. An electric car product, one designed to take advantage of the small mechanicals, is vastly superior to an IC diesel car product.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I take it the last diesel you drove was a Fergie tractor?

I've driven a new BMW 535. Nobody inside could tell it's a diesel on the move. And you wouldn't even when it was starting from cold.