How to prolong the life of your petrol-engined car!

[Dave Plowman (News)]

You have the RFL for electric cars upped to 2000 quid a year? Or whatever the average tax loss is?

Rule 1. The bastards will grind you down.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

You can shut down an IC engine as well when it's not in use. But of course, cars are used for all sorts of things - not only commuting in heavy traffic. And once you talk about 'motorway' use, the electric vehicle looses all its benefits. The losses in charging a battery become equally as significant as the losses in an IC engine.

But the losses in charging the battery?

Yup.

Yes. If all you want to do is move pollution from one area to another...

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Forget flying kites, prat, try answering the question. As if.

[Mike]

They do it with home produced bio-fuels for vehicle use. You have to send them about 23p for every litre you make.

[The Natural Philosopher]

FAR too complex.

I would suggest that some other form of taxation wold be introduced.

Massive road tax for example.

[The Natural Philosopher]

That's assuming everyone does 300 miles a day. Besides peak charge rate is only 3 kW, so 30M cars is 90,000 MW only.

Would not be surprised if you could not get that back by switching off all the street lamps. And traffic lights.

In reality I am fairly sure that most drivers would charge about once a week, dividing that by 7, to get 13GW as the total extra burden.

A GW is about what a large power station produces. So 13 power stations would keep most of the country on the roads by day,and the 3KW per household is not a bad estimate for what is drawn by a given household on average anyway. I would estimate 1-2KW is the average draw, most by day, which sort of means peak capacity is probably 2-4Kw/household.

Adding - for a once a week charge - another 450W to overnight demand is not a huge increase.

Anyway, maths aside, the grid could almost certainly cope as long as most charging is off peak, which it would be, and I suspect the only impact on power stations would be that some that are shut down overnight would stay up all night. And a few more base load stations would need to be constructed. I'd say half a dozen big nuclear sets could supply nearly all that was needed.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Power electronics has changed a LOT in te last 25 years actually.

The availability of low cost high power MOSFET for sitching has made it far easier to regulate DC morors or use AC motrs from DC sources. The adbvent of microprocessors has made it easy to use much more omplex algorithms to control as well.

Lithium bareies have really only arrived in bulk post the cell phone and laptop market, in the same way that Nickel technolpogy was driven by the portable power tool market.

No one invests huge money in car batteries when there are no electric cras. No one invets money in electric cars when there are no bartteries.

Stalemate.

HOWEVER ther are now batteries that ARE suitable for electric cars, albeit in small sizes more suitable for laptops etc. Fast charging is definitely possible - theaverage fast charge should take about 40 minutes if teh right gear is available, so battery removal and replacement is not really necessary.

The thrust of my argument is that there is now very little standing in the way of all this. The technology is not now 'unobtainable' or at the other side of a massive development investment.

Electrc cars of this nature, not only COULD be built, they CAN be built and one or two HAVE been built.

Even the use of small battery cells is possibly not such a disadvantage, as I have been sndidering teh cots impliactions of self monitoring arrays of cells, that could be isloated and exchanged as single cells, this eliminating the need for total battery replacement. In practice, yoy simply pull teh cells with te red lights on at teh srevice interval, run some diagmostics, and charge the owner for e.g. 30 or 40 new cells.

Bearing in mind that apart from tyres and brakes, and maybe a bit of oil here and there and hydraulic fluid, there are NO regular services needed for this car at all....no oil flters, no air filters, no oil changes, no new spark plugs, no transmission top ups...you are talking about a car that should be able to do 100,000 miles between battery changes and would probably need a 20,000 mile inspection for brake wear and general lubrication.

This sort of car makes sense in EVERY respect. It solves every vehicle problem except the final one. Where to get the electricity from. If nuclear power were adopted, or massive windfarms the you could have a totally carbon neutral transport infrastructure, and zero city and mortorway pollution.

Everybody is tinkering with these cars - there are dozens of 'concept cars' out there.

I suspect the first you may see in volume will be a Smart - its already the right sort of size and shape, and equipping one with a battery will not be hugely onerous.

This technology may be 25 years from de facto standard, but you will see these in the showrooms in less than 5 years is my guess.

Frankly, i could use one rght now, ecven if it cots 20 grand, it wouild save overall in a few years on servicing and fuel costs.

[The Natural Philosopher]

No, they don't actually.

Battries are not 50% efficient - they are far better than that.

There are issues in the overall GENERATION and TRASMISSION efficiency, but these are o worse, and, if you repalce carbon fulled generators with wind or nuclear, the pollution aspect goes way down.

say 15%?

No. Because electricity can be generared by carbon neutral means.

- hydro

- wind

- nuclear

- biomass if you must...

The iverall energy equations of such a setup are hat no more energy is used - in practice possibly less - and it can be generated by other means than teh burning of fossil fuels - which is the greatest environmental danger.

[Dr Evil]

Then the Pikeys get away with it yet again.

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[Dr Evil]

For once a very sensible post. Electric cars are feasible right now. There are few problems with the Lith batteries that need further development, but not that much. It's then a matter of manufacturing the batteries in quality. Toyota, Ford and Honda are having problems getting suppliers to deliver enough batteries for hybrids.

Currently, the problem is charging when away from a power point. That can be offset by a freewheeling piston Stirling generator. The piston is the only moving part. Once the charging setup is in place the Stirling's can be dispensed of.

Also motor technology is still advancing. There are some claims of great increases in efficiency, but they efficiency is still climbing the odd percent here and there. Once electric cars come about en-mass focus will be centred on battery and motor efficiency.

The technology is here right now, only a little refinement here and there and we will all be driving 100% electric - at last. The smoothness and quietness is terrific. My Prius is joy to drive when it is on full electric.

MIniMee

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[John Rumm]

Sounds rather OTT IMO. You are lucky to get 500 recharge cycles out of even the best Li-Ion batteries at the moment, Li-Polymer may be better but its unlikly to be an order of magnitude - perhaps double. So if you can do 300 mils per charge, and 1000 cycles per battery, you are talking about 30K miles tops per set of cells.

[John Rumm]

I was not putting that forward as a suggestion, more as a "there are plenty of ways it could be done if they want".

Having said that, much of the technology that would support road side comms to moving vehicles is already being rolled out (what is worse, I built some of it!), and would be pre-existing by then anyway.

[.]

In article , Dr Evil writes

Look, John's agreeing with himself, it must be some sort of condition

[Dave Plowman (News)]

See the other posts about fuel costs and tax.

[Dr Evil]

Bertie, I see yiu are active again. Sad but true.

MiniMee

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[Dave Plowman (News)]

Which is hardly ever. Suggesting you've never driven one, let alone own one.

So we've got two claimed owners of the Prius on this group. Or has IMM morphed once more?

[Dr Evil]

Richard, I have a Prius.

Richard, I have gone over to the other side.

MiniMee

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[The Natural Philosopher]

Check your maths. I made 300 cycles of 300 miles 90,000 miles.

Your figures give 300,000 miles.,

300 miles times 1000 cycles = three hundred times one thousand = three hudred thousand...

[The Natural Philosopher]

He's morphed, He's now doctor evil, presumably so he can escape killfiles.

[Dr Evil]

Please put me on your killfile ASAP.

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