One car maker says that if you want long journeys an EV is not for you. As I said a few days ago, one stop on a 400 mile journey is what I would expect. but 3 or 4 stops means a 2 day journey with the associted costs of accomodation plus finding another day.
Which car maker? One with a vested interest in selling ICE vehicles? They can go just as far as ICE vehicles.
It?s what I would expect in my EV too. Your point being?
Tim
"Tim+" snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@news.individual.net...
I suppose it will get to the stage when people do this: keep an EV for normal usage and hire an ICE car for longer journeys or holidays where you do a lot of driving to get there, a lot or driving around while you are there, and don't know what the charging situation will be.
Having to plan stops as required to let an EV recharge sounds a *huge* retrograde step in convenience.
As a matter of interest, have you ever travelled somewhere that is well within the car's range and then found that there isn't a vacant charger, and had to waste a lot of time driving around until you find one and then have to walk back to where you wanted to be? And have you ever returned to the car and found that the charging, which appeared to have started OK, has terminated without warning so the car's battery is not fully charged? have you ever had to change you plans because you haven't been able to charge the car for the return journey? That would be my fear - of going somewhere and then not being able to get back home without a wait of many hours.
On the face of it, EVs seem a huge leap forward: no exhaust pollution at the point of use (it's "moved" to the power station, assuming a fossil-fuel one) and no gears so no discontinuities of acceleration as a gearbox (whether manual or automatic) changes gear and therefore the amount of torque that you get at the wheels changes suddenly - just that ultimate nirvana of a car whose speed and/or acceleration is directly controlled by the position of the accelerator, rather than being at one level of indirection via a gearbox. My fear is that battery and charging technology won't have progressed far enough by 2040 or whenever the UK government ban the sale and/or use of ICE cars (or levy punitive prices for usage) and that we will end up with cars that are *worse* than we already have in terms of range or refuelling. A shorter range is an annoyance - I've got used to 700 miles on a tankful of diesel - but can be worked around: you just need to fill up a bit more frequently, as I have to with my wife's car which is more thirsty and yet paradoxically has a smaller tank. But the thought of not being able to replenish the range (whether it's large or small) in a couple of minutes is something that I would find utterly intolerable because it would require prior planning and curtail spontaneity. In particular it means you have to research the locations of charging points for every place that you intend to visit.
At least "clean" fuel cars (eg hydrogen - no NOx, particulates or CO2) can be refuelled quickly. Maybe that it what we should be pinning our hopes on more than trying to make an EV emulate the multi-gigawatt "charging" rate of filling up with a tank of petrol/diesel. Or else developing a means of swapping-out batteries to replace a discharged battery with a charged one in a few minutes - which would mean batteries having to be hot-swappable and a means of de-skilling the job so Joe Public can do it, as he can fill up with petrol/diesel. No, hot-swappable batteries sounds like a non-starter ;-)
The particular problem will be when ICE cars are completely unavailable, even for hire. That would impose a big limitation on long journeys. It would put an end to a journey that is greater than the range of the car, and would mean a long break eg overnight - so incurring a hotel cost - or for a meal that you weren't intending to have. We sometimes go on cruises (the bottom seems to have dropped out of that market, because of Covid) and we often make the journey back home from Southampton to Yorkshire in one go, maybe with a loo stop or two and swapping over driver - but certainly no more than
10 minutes per stop. If the journey is greater than the car's range, we'd be stuffed unless we wanted to wait for many hours while the car recharged and we had to "invent" something to while away that time. And that is called "progress" :-( Maybe there will be a resurgence in the old Motorail service where you can put your car onto a train at one station and retrieve it from another, having travelled with it - but that would work out very expensive and you'd lose the freedom of being able to "make it up as you go along". Thinking of trains, I wonder how many less-used lines will close because it it not cost-effective to upgrade the infrastructure to overhead electrification so diesel trains can be replaced by electric. Likewise for buses outside a town or city."Tim+" snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@news.individual.net...
I think rapid refuelling is more of a must-have than you are suggesting. If your EV already has a range of only 200 miles (for example) would you be prepared to wait while that full range is restored every 200 miles? Would you decide to give up after 100 miles-worth of charge and take the risk that it will get you home? We have got used to rapid refuelling. To remove that is, for me, a *huge* retrograde step. If we'd never known it, we might not miss it. But we *do* know how short petrol/diesel refuelling is in relation to range added. Should we have to change our lives to accommodate "advances" in technology. To quote my grandpa's favourite aphorism: "never forget that 'progress' may be a *negative* number". To put it really bluntly, is saving the planet (which has a long-term effect) sufficient to outweigh people having to readjust their lives (on a daily basis)? Obviously we *must* save the planet, but it requires bloody good marketing to "sell" that to Joe Public if it is not to come across as killjoy and sanctimonious.
The hassle of long thumb-twiddling waits for recharging might even be so great that I decide not to make the journey at all, given the hassle that it will entail. On a very long journey, you'd stop for a meal, but would that be long enough to fully charge the battery? Might it not require overnight or full-working-day charging? The problem isn't just the infrastructure for supplying very high charging rates (ie electrical power). It's also designing batteries that can accept charge at that rate without overheating or exploding even if the cables, transformers, power stations can accept it. I forget the exact figures and I can't be arsed to work it out at this time in the evening, but 60 litres of diesel in less than 5 minutes is (as far as I remember) around 5 megawatts. Suppose the charger is 99% efficient and the battery converts 99% of the electricity into chemical form rather than heat. That's still 1% of 5 MW or 50 kW of heat that you have to dispose of. OK, so you charge at a lower rate and accept a longer charge time - make it 50 minutes rather than 5 mins charging time, for example. That's still 5 kW of waste heat that has to be dissipated. You'd need huge heat fins. I suppose if you charge at home you could devise a system which used a heat pump to extract that heat and heat your house - except that you'd be charging the car at night when you probably wouldn't want to heat the house. Difficult one - you're into the realms of storing heat, and I know from bitter experience (my first house) that storage heaters are pretty useless because they give out their heat too quickly and are cold by the following evening.
As a matter of interest, does electricity for charging a car get charged at roughly the same tariff and VAT as domestic electricity for heating/lighting a house? Is there a surcharge - the equivalent of the extra tax on diesel for road vehicles compared with red diesel for agricultural vehicles or heating oil for central heating? What is the like-for-like cost of charging a car in a car park compared with doing so from your own house supply?
700 miles on one charge? That's what 60 litres of diesel gives me in my car. I'd be prepared to sacrifice range down to maybe 300 miles, but I wouldn't be prepared to sacrifice refuelling time.
So are there EVs which have a realistic, real-world range (including power for heating or air-conditioning, and lighting, and for climbing hills and driving at motorway speeds where air resistance is greater) of 200-300 miles so you could do the 400 mile journey with just one non-trivial (eg loo-break) stop? And how long would your "one stop" be. Longer than you'd choose to take for a meal break etc if you could refuel much more quickly? Can you honestly say that you've never wanted to set off again, but you've had to wait longer (maybe a lot longer) because your car still hasn't been charged enough to do the rest of your journey?
You also have to factor in the increased number of refuelling stops. I can go 600 miles on a tankful with my current diesel; I'd be lucky to get half that with an EV.
So one 5 minute stop against two much longer stops. I don't want to have my meal break in some service station; I tend to take stuff with me and eat in some pleasant place off the main road.
Well that?s true but how often do you drive 600 miles? ;-). One of the nice things about an EV is hat I have my own filling station at home so topping up overnight is easy.
Many charge points aren?t situated in service stations. I would hope that if you were undertaking a 600 mile journey that you would plan a couple of decent stops for safety?s sake anyway so a few 45 minute stops might not slow you up that much.
One of the best parts of EV ownership that has to be experienced to be believed is the joy of driving something that?s finally got the power plant it deserves. The ICE is a very square peg that has been forced into a round hole for very many years. We?ve admittedly got very good at rounding off some of the worst corners but it?s led to huge mechanical complexity. It?s only when you drive an EV you realise what a terrible fit the ICE is. Its *only* saving grace is rapid refuelling. For me, that?s not enough now.
Tim
It?s all about the compensations.
Like the joke about a man offering a woman a million pounds to have sex with him. When she agrees he asks, ?How about for £25??. When she replies, ?Certainly not! What kind of woman do you think I am?? he replies ?I think we?ve established that, we?re just negotiating the price now?.
It might seem out question when we?ve all enjoyed a lifetime of near instant refuelling but if the price and compensations are right, it?ll stop seeming so outrageous. My EV is currently costing me 4p a mile in fuel and I should be able to improve on that once I get a smart meter. What does your car cost per mile in fuel?
Not yet. ;-). I?m not saying it won?t happen but a bit of planning goes a long way towards avoiding getting stuck.
2030 now I believe. To be sure there?s room for improvement but for many people it?s perfectly good enough now, no need to wait another 20 years.If you burn hydrogen in an ICE I think they will still produce NOx. It?s a terrible fuel in ICEs because of its physical properties. Of course fuel cells wouldn?t have this problem but if you think current EVs still need more development you?ll be waiting a very long time for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles to be viable.
I believe Tesla started out with this in mind but the logistics of banking huge piles of battery packs in sufficient numbers to supply demand when it?s so much easier to just plug them in won the day.
You keep saying this. An EV can go just as far as an ICE vehicle, just a bit slower. How far are you realistically thinking of travelling In one go? Would it be such a disaster to have to stop every couple of hundred miles for 45 minutes or so?
No, you just recharge en-route. Just like you refill your car. It will just take 45 min to an hour depending on the car.
You do know that most EVs can charge on DC at rates from 50 up to 150kW per hour? Overnight charging is what you do at home. You would have to be planning a very long journey to be forced into an overnight stop.
Tim
Indeed. My Triumph Spitfire with its 7 gallon tank would barely do 200 miles of spirited driving.
Back in the 1970s.
Today of course we expect 400 miles from a tank, at least. No BEV can match that.
about the same. In fuel. The rest is of course taxation. For example heating oil is currently around 40p a litre - around 5p a mile in my rather fuel hungry 3 liter jag.
What I pay at the pump for road taxed diesel, is three times that. How much will you pay for electricity when all that fuel tax disappears out of the revenues coffers?
60p a unit would seem reasonable.
Granted if we had ideal batteries EV would be anyone's first choice, but we don't. As it is, range is severely limited and long refuel times simply compounds the problem . The fact is that an EV simply isn't suitable for a trip from the UK to
- say - Italy. Or coast to coast USA.
It is ideal for doing a supermarket run, or a regular 50 mile commute, but even so capital cost is high, and the 'tax free' situation of on road electricity cannot last.
Woosh! My point was that you car drive the length of Britain in either. You?ll just have to refuel more often in the EV.
Tim
But I can legally fill my car and drive it for 4 pence a mile. Now, today, this week, next week... You can?t.
And you think tax won?t increase on petrol and diesel too over the next 10 years? Dream on.
I doubt it (at least in the near future). Because of the many ways we use electricity and the problem of trying to meter automotive use, I think it?s much more likely we?ll go down the NZ route and tax mileage.
Tim
Well I wouldn?t want to do either of those trips without an overnight stop or two so for sure, it would take longer but it would be doable. (Unless you?ve set your heart on doing a Top Gear style ?non-stop? journey. In the real world though, very few people want to do that.)
And nor will the current taxation level on fossil fuels.
Tim
you appear to have forgotten to add "ner, nur, ne, nur, ne"
People won't be taunted into buying EVs, they'll wait until they meet all their requirements.
Oh dear. That was not what you said. You said (see above) "They can go just as far as ICE vehicles".
No, they cant. And electric car cannot do the 10,0000 miles that a jumbo jet ICE vehicle can do. It cannot even do 400 miles
And in fact you CAN drive the length of Britain (600 miles) in some ICE cars.
Electric cars have nice features, but they do not cover the same bases as ICE cars. Instead of lying and pretending that they do why don't you just accept that your choice was right *for you* and not for everyone else?
No, but how long do you seriously think that will last? My point is that you have been given a tax holiday for political reasons, not that electric cars are in fact any cheaper in reality.
Not as fast as it will on electricity, once they gave converted everybody to heat pumps and electric cars...
Its already tripled in 20 years due to 'renewable' energy. Tripling again doesn't seem very far fetched, with tax.
Could be. but I suspect that domestic electricity will simply have massive VAT slapped on it.
Indeed. It probably costs me about £2000 a year to *own* a car, what with servicing tax insurance and MOT. The cost of the fuel at 5000 miles a year is about £1000.
How much would it cost me to BUY an electric car? Upside of £30 grand for a decent one.
I'd die before it made economic sense.
No, but I don?t think many people are aware of just how much cheaper they are in fuel terms at the monument so I make no apology for highlighting this fact.
Tim
Not everything in life has to be justified on economic grounds. Do you own any works of art? Do they make economic sense? Probably not, but they give pleasure.
Likewise, EVs are lovely to drive. I glad I?ve hopefully got many years of pleasurable driving ahead of me free of the worry of oily bits going wrong.
Tim
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