Electric cars a step nearer mainstream?

[Duncan Wood]

Drilling small holes in concrete isn't particularly expensive.

[Andy Hall]

As you said - engine block heaters and small fan heaters in the car to warm it before leaving.

[Andy Hall]

Not the milkman any more? ;-)

[Mary Fisher]

I do, we cook our own. We were taught by Indian neighbours :-)

You could have visited them, introduced yourself ... I reckon that most people in this street know most of the others.

[Espen Koht]

I still don't see how you see that as an insurmountable problem. You surface run cables around the outside walls; that's all the bays facing those walls taken care of. The interior likely involves some facing bays in lines where you can run a gentle curb along the short end where the bays face each other and stick the cable in there. There are reasonable odds there will be some columns inside the structure to meet these curbs so you can run the cables down to the curb from those, or worst case you run a channel through the top layer of the concrete for a few meters to get under any surface the cars will be driving over to get to your curb from one of the outside walls.

[Andy Champ]

Do you have anything except the manufacturer's claims to substantiate that claim? I can't find anything.

Andy

[Andy Champ]

Actually, diesels do have cats (simpler, plain oxidising ones) and they are more efficient because of the higher compression ratio and lack of throttle butterfly.

If cats was it, pre-cat petrol engines would have been as efficient as diesels of the same era. Which they weren't, which is why old trucks were diesel.

Andy

[Rupert Moss-Eccardt]

However, cars do sometimes have a filament to boost the heat coming into the cabin from over the engine and air-cooled VWs certainly used electric heating.

[Andy Champ]

Almost certainly by train. Air is however far cheaper - largely because the airlines do not have to pay for laying track...

Andy

[Andy Champ]

Please don't top post.

Modern batteries are sealed systems, its the "conventional" lead-acid batteries that generate hydrogen when charging.

The rest of your points are valid.

Andy

[The Natural Philosopher]

Surprisingly not. More friction and weight on a train than a plane.

[Andy Champ]

Yes. Little fan heaters.

Mind, that was in Helsinki in January...

Andy

[Roger]

The message from The Natural Philosopher contains these words:

Where did you get that from?

Planes are usually ranked no better than cars and the mean greenies would have us believe that trains are 50% better than cars.

[Jules]

Yep, very common around here. Most hotels have outlets in the parking lot to plug the block heater into, too (power's cheap enough that they just provide it as a free service, I suppose)

cheers

Jules

[Brian L Johnson]

Some cars also used to have small diesel space heaters along the lines o= f =

for the =

interior. AIR, it used electrically-pre-heated diesel to ensure a start= =

in all weather conditions and was mounted in the boot. Or, as they call= ed =

it, trunk.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Apologies: it seems you are right overall.

However the answer you get seems to vary widely depending on where you get it.

[Dave Liquorice]

A block heater isn't going to take a lot of power, a couple of hundred watts at most. Some what less than trying to charge a 50kWH battery in a few hours...

[The Natural Philosopher]

Indeed, but the cost of laying cables isn't about how big the cable is mostly*.

• undersea power cables excepted, where it is.

[Roberts]

Motive power batteries such as used in electric powered fork-lifts are not sealed. The normal batteries on a i/c engined car are usually sealed although on some the makers label is stuck over the battery covering up the access to the cells. When this label is removed it is possible to top up the battery. Can someone explain to me about why not to top post?

Alan

[Rod]

You live longer if you don't. :-)

Convention - with good logical basis. If the thread were printed out, what order would you do this in? Most people would expct page 1 to start with the first post and progress through from there.