Is that where most people fill up at motorway service stations ?
I guess people never fill up on the way to or back from work then. Seems a bit starnge that peole might not mind an extar 20mins to their commute journey.
Most use their cars for work and drive about 1-2 hours.
That's triue but it could be built in to the cars software, you have that with phones and laptops not sure how quickly a car battery would age and become annoying. Go for an hours drive and spend 15mins charging not sure most would find that acceptable.
Most people as yet don't have that facility and even them will their CU and cabling be up to it on a large scale. Outside my flat you'll be lucky to find a parking space.
Just noticed that you've quoted power, GW, rather than energy GWh or TWh. To convert my numbers to GW, divide by the number of hours in a year (8760), and multiply by 1000 to get to GW. So an energy of 360TWh becomes a power level of 41.1GW, an energy of 471TWh becomes a power level of 53.8GW and an energy of 831TWh becomes a power level of
Where were you for 2016 ? Fancy numbers, science, and expert analysis are out. The *only* question we need to consider is if these batteries *feel* right. We don't need naysayers like you talking things down. . . . . . . . ;)
All of this assumes the next 50 years are going to be like the last.
I can't help but feel we're in the last days of the car - certainly as a solution to private transport.
If anyone has actually thought beyond the press releases, it's obvious that the *big* (I mean beyond Government spending) money - from Google et al - is going on the idea of autonomous/driverless cars.
The second you have a car which drives itself, you can immediately halve
- maybe quarter - the number of cars needed to move people around. After all 80% of cars are unused for 80% of the 24 hours in a day.
Couple that with an Uber-style supply/demand network, and in 30 years time the idea of owning and driving a car (which will have become *very* expensive) will seem just weird.
The ICE car was first available for public use in the 1897. By 1930 every village blacksmith had turned to car repairs. I believe we'll see the same seismic shift with driverless cars.
Of course a true autonomous car will just drive to the nearest power point, and charge until ready. But there will always be a fleet "on the road" to handle capacity.
Such a future does bring into question the entire purpose of railways, of course. Which is why - especially given it's glacial timescale - HS2 seems like an absolute waste of money.
With due respect, the error in your calcs is that you are forgetting that electric traction is almost 100% efficient, whilst ICEs are about
25% efficient. If we take the ratio as 3:1, your estimate of the extra power required is about 3 times too high.
You *should* have estimated The extra power needed as 471/3 = 157 TWh, which is around 40% of current electricity consumption. I would settle for that. Some of it could be provided by utilising unused capacity at off-peak times, and the rest would require some power station building.
The end of the car will coincide with the end of the world as we know it.
Of course. Business always wants to sell you something new.
Given how many thing of their car as part of themselves - not to be lent or shared in any way - I can't see that.
Taxis ain't new. All the disadvantages of them still apply - no matter how cheap and reliable the service is. But Uber only exists because of a big supply of cheap labour. And those better paid who can afford it.
But still a car. Cars have been getting easier to drive as time went on. Driverless simply being an extension of that. But people will still want their own choice of make and model - even if if capable of driving itself
There have been plenty of 'pool' car systems tried. With limited success. Same as pool bikes. Some do use them - but there seem to be even more owned ones on the roads than ever.
Driverless cars will never match the speed of a train between city centres.
I did in fact note that point ("But that's an over-estimate, as doesn't take into account the improved efficiency of electric vehicles, so it would be somewhat less than twice in reality"), but didn't put numbers to it. I should have.
Yes, my estimate is high relative to yours on two counts. First, the efficiency of electric vs ICE vehicles: I'm happy to accept your factor of 3 times more efficient, which would bring my estimate down to 18GW. More here
formatting link
Second, my calculation was for all road vehicles including goods vehicles, while your calculation was for electric cars only, although the total miles you used was for all vehicles. Figures I have for all road vehicles for 2015 are 317 billion miles, but 248 billion miles for cars and taxis
formatting link
I think that would have made your figure a bit lower by about 20%.
But we're not a million miles apart. The key point is that one can't just switch over to an all-electric transport system simply by plugging in ones car into the socket in the garage to charge it overnight on the assumption that the electricity is always available, which I'm sure a lot of people imagine will happen. We're on a knife edge with electrical supplies in winter as it is, and any increase in consumption without a corresponding increase in supply and distribution facilities will just not work.
I'm sure that's right. There may be some overall saving in fuel and hence pollution, as power stations are more thermodynamically efficient than ICEs. (Actually, I'm just assuming that, so I'll wait to be engulfed in flames.)
However, we don't need to build lots of power stations just yet. At least, not for that reason. At Dec-2016, we had 90,000 electric vehicles on the road, out of a total of around 37 million licensed vehicles. So, it's not exactly happening overnight.
that's what I thought and I'll assume and until proved wrong thsat service stations will rip you off for charging too, otherwise how wil they make a profit as petrol sales decline due to electric vehicals ?
Cars have a longer range using petrol at the moment. Most electric cars are about 100 miles on a charge aren't they. If you only have a up to 10 mile drive then get a bike.
you were lucky then. So as most already know electric cars are mostly only a short range option.
Most in london can't even park outside their own home. so were will they pl ug it into. As an example my brother visit me in his car on a sunday used to come satur day too in the last 14 months h';es only been able to park outside my home ONCE and even then it's in the street I;n need to find a way of getting the charging cable to the car he usually has to park on the other soide of the road the last two weekend he had difficulty finding a space in the same ro ad. Not all places of work have parking spaces for everyone usually just execut ives.
It;s not easily availible in the street where cars normally park for the ma jority, and that's when they have houses what about the new builds of flats and as they convert 4 bed houses into 3 or more flats there just isn't the space.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.