Fully Electric Car available soon

[Mike Dodd]

(assuming you meant "Bye Bye", as in the end of the IC...

Still very limited - such that for most people it could not replace a conventional IC car 100%.

$80,000 price?, say £55,000 on an optimistic $:£ technology ratio.

250 miles for a 2 seater driven frugally, then a specialised 3.5 hr recharging time. Hmmm, there goes the weekend trips. Still, no boot space to support a weekend trip.

The saloon is expected to have a significantly reduced range, due at least in part to the increased weight. Less range (still with a 3.5 hr recharge time) - less practical.

Oh, and if you think oil was scarce, try the Lithium used in the batteries. Replace all ICs with lithium powered electric and I think you'll hit a minor snag.

Maybe a nice toy for whacking around country lanes, and for the local commute. Beyond that and it is simply not practicable.

Please note that I'll welcome the day that electric replaced IC - but that day isn't here yet, nor will it be in 18 months with the release of the saloon. With the recharging limitations of this technology you need to be looking at something like a three-fold range improvement before you can start scrapping the IC.

Close, but no cigar.

Whatever happened to hydrogen fuel cells?

[The Natural Philosopher]

If you could afford a Tesla you wouldn't be shopping at Tescos. QED.

[Doctor Drivel]

What would be the range of a Ferrari when it does 130mph continuously? At

130mph it will be in single figures, so not long at all.

[Doctor Drivel]

He is sad in this weather. They take him down to Southend and let him play on the dodgems and cool off in the water.

[Doctor Drivel]

Well we know you are into perpetual senility that is clear.

Sad isn't it. They should take him to a caravan site near Margate. That will do him the world of good. He will think the caravan is moving while he is in it, brum, brum, brum.

[Doctor Drivel]

Sad isn't it. The topic is the new EV and he on about something else, whatever it is. I hope they make a breakthrough with drugs to cure all this.

[Doctor Drivel]

We really do need a breakthrough in drugs for senility. We really do.

[The Natural Philosopher]

The saiod that bout heting oil and diesel..

You KNOW what it will be. the cars will come with a special plug that ONLY fits a separately metered socket...which has a telltale that sends details on what car is plugged into it back to Big Brother Central...and the car will come equipped with a WiFi point that constantly talks to Big Brother recording its electricity consumption, and if it doesn't match the charger or you have excceded any speed limit at all, 16 policemen with dum dum equipped handguns will descend on you at 3am and there will be an 'understandable mistake'

50KWh at 250v is only 200A/h..most people with off road parking would probably trickle charge overnight every night..15 hours at 13A is enough to fully charge.

Exactly. Lithium - if you look at the energy density (energy per unit weight) - is about the best metal to use apart from sodium. Current lithoum batteries arer about twice the wight of the theoretical best performance, so there is a bit top come there.

Already charge cycle efficiences of a lot better than 90% are achievable at the battery (current CHARGERS are not optimised for effciency) anfd dischrage rates of the order of 5-10 times ampere hour capacity are already achiveable..i.e. a 50KW hour pack can deliver bursts of

250-500KW - well in excess of 700 bhp. Electric motors and controllers can easily achieve > 90% efficiency as well, and if regenerative braking is used, that further improves the 'stop start' efficiency. The batteries will do around 3-5 years and 300-500 cycles CURRENTLY and there is room for improvement Charge retention is good..no going flat in a few weeks - more like a year..

Assuming ready supplies of cheap non fossil electricity, this means the whole thing is technically FEASIBLE..only battery cost, plus generating capacity is holding it all back.

I believe an Electric SMART car is being shown at the motor shows later in the year. This will be interesting.

Yes. A LOT easier than building a hydrogen infrastructure.

Star with TESCOS car parks, probably. A 50-70A charge point with a credit card interface should be relatively simple..

[The Natural Philosopher]

Clive Sinclair springs to mind...

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Other ways of getting the tax revenue - which believe me they can't afford to lose. Road pricing is the obvious one and remove direct taxation on petrol and diesel. At the moment there are so few electric cars it's just good publicity for the government to allow them to be cheaper to run per mile. But if they became popular - let alone the norm - things will soon change.

I doubt the existing grid structure could cope with charging every single vehicle in the country overnight.

It depends entirely on how much power you give it - same as an IC engined one. Or perhaps the land speed record for a wheel driven vehicle is already held by an electric car? ;-)

It's as I said - there's always a new battery technology just round the corner which will 'solve the problem'. But it ain't arrived yet for general use. It will when you can store approx the same amount of energy (adjusted for the higher efficiency of an electric motor) as the average petrol tank in a reasonable volume, weight and cost.

The trouble is electric car makers and their advocates always quote the best possible range and best possible performance without making it clear the two can't happen at the same time. To fool the gullible like dribble, who already thinks it's possible to exceed 100% efficiency. Now we all know that driving an IC car hard results in heavier fuel consumption and of course the same applies to an electric one.

If you had an electric vehicle with the same sort of range under real world driving as an IC one, which can be charged at home, you'd probably not need many 'filling stations'. They would have to charge for supplying the facility, so would only be used on long journeys where they'd be essential.

[Mike Dodd]

My mistake - I was thinking about tantalum shortages in industry, partly because of ore shortages, back in the early 2000's. It does sound like lithium is more sustainable.

[Doctor Drivel]

They have a patented power charger unit for a domestic home.

The unique aspect of this car is the power (or is it energy) management of the batteries and electrical equipment in the car.

France already has much of this in place. in the likes of La Rochelle.

[Doctor Drivel]

We shall see. It maybe a con, but read up on the outfit (do a Google on Tesla Motors), with Lotus on board tooled up to manufacture, as are the component suppliers, the backing they have, etc, and something tells me this is no con trick.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

That 'they' are going for premium performance and price says a lot about just how viable the project is. The profit margin in this sector is enormous. It isn't for family cars.

Porsche sports cars (that's how it's spelt, BTW) sell mainly on driving pleasure - they're in no way a practical everyday vehicle. And the majority of those who buy them are very unlikely to be tempted by an electric vehicle to replace them.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

But it never happens. Every US car sold here costs about the same in gbp numbers as dollars. Which is why they are so rare and poor value.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I think you will find that a large part of the earth's crust is made of lithium actually. One of the most common elements.

a US centric view on world lithium reserves..that totally ignores Asia.

Not today, no.

But consider...IF the cars were not sold, but leased, and the overall operational cost and fuel cost was less than - say - a small commuter car, and you need a second car to commute with..

I agree its not - like the Internet - going to be an overnight thing.

I can' remember when the first Internet pipe from the UK to Holland opened up..mid 90's. we all yelled 'this could be he real thing; but everybody else was saying 'rubbish. X-25 is the future' Then we had the hype boom in 1998-2000, then a realization that it would take tome, but now, maybe 10 years or so after the first decent IP infrastructure was laid in the UK, we take it completely for granted. I get for £20 a month today what would have cost £20,000 a year or more then.

Same as X-25 really. The wrong track that the big boys will take for all the wrong reasons. That will quietly get sidelined because in the end the cost benefit will not stack up to electric battery except in a few cases.

Look at Microsoft exchange. Its an X400 mail server with IP stuck on the back end. How many users use X400 these days?

>

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Another figure plucked from thin air. Since you're so good at quoting other's figures please give a source for this one.

[Doctor Drivel]

Yep. I can't wait to see the back of them.

A Fiesta type of car would not require a two speed gearbox as this sporty one has, be very simple, so simple to make and run (no servicing) that manufacturing costs will drop. The range would be there. The only initial drawback is the charging points, which would be overcome.

It is the same price as a Porche, its direct competitor. Sounds good to me.

Frugally? Where did you get that? The aim was car that performs the same, or better than existing cars and with range.

It is sports job, not a family tourer.

Reduced range? You made that up. It would not require the gearbox and they say by the time they introduce one (probably made in Malaysia by Proton as they own Lotus) battery technology will be better. They know what is being tested but not yet in the shops yet.

What I have read that is not a problem. Also, newer battery technologies are emerging without Lithium.

That is its market. Sports cars are toys.

It is actually. Drive to the in-laws 200 miles away and while they feed you another 250 miles is being fed into the thing from their socket,

You are a very negative person. Do you think the world is going to end soon too?

The recharging would be introduced in supermarkets, in the Canada they plug their cars in to posts in each caring spot to keep the engine warm. Recharging is not a big issue to implement as EVs would not flood the market overnight. When it is clear they are here the authorities will eagerly make provision for them, especially in cities. On main roads services would have charging points. No one would wait 3 hours for a charge as few would allow the charge to drop so low - as people don't allow fuel tanks to drop to near zero they will not do that with the batteries and most don't fill fuel tanks up either, put in £15 or £20 worth of petrol. If the battery charge is 33% and you have a 1 hour charge as you have lunch that still gets you a long way.

Then the Toshiba batteries are to be introduced that can take 80% of the charge in 3 minutes and full in 5.

The future is looking rosy, so no need for you to expect the world to end.

[Doctor Drivel]

A car does 250 miles and he thinks it is not enough, maybe he wants to go to Mars. Sad isn't it. I hope they take him to the coast today so he can walk the prom in his loafers.

[John Stumbles]

On the planet I live on not many people's in-laws have a 70 Amp socket outlet.