OT: Car Tax

[Snip]

I suspect that ones journey preferences change with age. 40 years ago, I was quite happy to drive 500+ in a day; now I feel that 300 is quite enough. I also, nowadays, tend to drive for between 2 and 3 hours before I need a break - both for the loo and for a coffee or even a sandwich as well.

This stop is quite long enough to recharge for the next stage. A couple of weeks ago, I drove from Surrey to Aberdeen and back (1300 miles) without any thumb twiddling. But then, I'm not dashing.

So your thermal input of 637kWh gets you 700 miles and costs you about £160, or 0.91kWht/mile.

Whereas a moderate EV will need 175kWh to cover the same distance at a cost of £15.75 if charged at an off peak rate, even less is PV panels supply the electricity (though it is more cost effective to sell the self generated electricity under SEG and buy it back at a cheaper off peak rate (15p/kWh SEG and 9.5p/kWH off peak).

At my age it's not worth the investment in an EV for the few miles I do in a car but if I were still commuting 80miles/day it would be a no brainer.

No need to guess. Lead acid batteries and other secondary batteries of the time were simply awful in energy density. Things have gone a long way since.

Quite, but you also need to account for the mass of engine and transmission.

Additionally the laws of thermodynamics mean you can only transform a minority of the energy in your fuel tank into real, useful energy.

While I agree that 5 minute charging isn't feasible, your calculations are way out, as you've not allowed for the low efficiency of ICE vehicles.

700 miles at 3.6 mile per kWH is about 195 kWh.

2.34MW.

However, is 5 minutes really necessary? Charging at home most of the time means no trips for "refueling" normally, so does it matter that it takes longer on the few long journeys per year that most people do?

Some (not many) cars and chargers can achive 350kW now - so less than 40 minutes. Two 20 minute breaks on a 700 mile journey sounds perfectly reasonable to have a quick rest, a snack and use the toilets.

NY has clearly made up his mind. He wishes for unicorns knowing that he’ll never get one so he can use this as a reason for not having an EV.

Of course everyone’s circumstances are different but I’ve done 50,000 miles in the last three years but because 98% of the time I’m charging at home, charging time has virtually never been an issue.

Without a home charger I grant you life currently with an EV would be trying, but plenty of people do it. Personally I wouldn’t.

Tim

That's still around 2MW. OK, that's a lot less but still very problematic.

assuming 70mph, that's 10 hours driving - a bit too much for me in one day

So you're picking up a 70yo car you've never seen and intend to drive it the length of the country?

I'd be worried about whether the reliability is as good as I'd hope.

Andy

It's not unknown to arrive at a motorway filling station on a busy day and half to wait while half a dozen cars in front of you fill up.

I don't fancy that at 40 minutes each.

I do however suggest to my wife she should have an electric. She never goes far.

Andy

How many batteries would have to be stored at each change station?

Would H&S allow that kind of energy storage in one place in an urban environment. How big a fire would be caused when the whole stock went up?

These are all very good questions. I'm sure similar ones were raised when 10,000 gallon tanks were placed under a petrol forecourt.

I'm sure they can be made safe. Even the Boeing 787 Dreamliner flies with Lithium Ion cells, well it did eventually!

Good question. But I don't see how else you're going to satisfy quick refuelling stops.

Lucid Air — 20 miles per minute Hyundai Ioniq 6 — 16.1 miles per minute Porsche Taycan — 15.5 miles per minute Tesla Model 3 — 15 miles per minute <=== some cars have a "hump" in the charge curve, some are flat Kia EV6 — 14.5 miles per minute Metrics like this must be carefully cherry-picked as a result

It's not that we lack for Public Relations releases.

"Fully Charges in 3 Minutes and to 50% in 90 Seconds Operates From -30 Degrees C to +100 Degrees C Patented Design Does Not Catch Fire <=== If you're charging a battery in 3 minutes, " something else could catch fire. Electrical panel. Liquid cooled cabling (liquid leak).

The problem with the whizzy new stuff, is the cycle count. The two leading technologies, support 5000 and 7000 charge cycles.

A recent "competitor" supports 1000 cycles. It would be sweet if it was ready, but it is not ready today (1000 cycles is NDG). Manufacturer claimed this and that about it, recently.

The Sparkle Pony batteries, they may not catch fire, but the maker won't be around for your warranty claim later.

It's really a case of "Being careful what you wish for".

7kW or 11kW charging, will get you closer to the 5000 or 7000 number. Endless Fast Charging can only be supported by a Warranty, and a high purchase price, to cover the pack replacement you'll need.

Some cars will "deny" a fast charge request, if you've done four or five fast charges in the same month (30 day running average). This means the manufacturer has some idea how many fast charges it takes, to not make it to the end of the warranty period.

You have to be realistic about this. These are not electrolytic capacitors (infinite cycles). They are real live honest to god batteries, with all the foibles of batteries. You will notice lead acid had foibles, and is a grotesque solution. Well, this is a sliding scale, and lithium is the same thing. It's a battery technology, and a non-ideal one at that.

At the present time, it best supports local driving, and it could make a real difference to large city pollution. But it's not as practical for every purpose. If you want to haul your yacht from one end of the country to the other, it's not "perfect" for that purpose.

There was one tech demo, of a <cough> "battery" where the vehicle drove for 1000 miles without stopping. The battery type destroys the anode, and you carry the battery to the recycle center, to have the metals recycled (it's like driving on a dry cell). It's not like there isn't "a solution", but nobody has wads of cash to pay for that. It's like claiming you could get to work faster, strapped to a rocket.

The people who actually own these things, try to run them at the "lowest cost conditions". And that alters their behavior as car drivers.

As an example of a usage pattern, one you can use as a reference, a Proterra public transit bus, you can drive it for 50 minutes, charge it for 10 minutes, and do that

22 hours a day, take the bus into the depot and hose the dirt off it. And do that every day. Could you run your delivery business for 8 hours a day, with that pattern ? You could, but there would always be a whiner doing time and motion, complaining about it. The charger for that, uses a blade contact that lowers onto the roof of the bus, at the end of the route. That's an example of a pattern suited to some business usages. It attempts to distribute the charge interval, over the duration of the day. The charge rate is around 500kW.

We have some "test BEV" buses here, where they didn't even buy the whizzy charger, and the bus plugs in with a "home charger" at the depot. I have no idea how many hours it takes to refill. The test bus drives for less than four hours a day, and drivers are training on it. We have delayed our bulk purchase, into the future, as COVID has changed the financial circumstances of the public transit company. The one we will be buying, is NOT the one they are training on :-) Clever. Sorta.

Paul

I managed Suffolk to W.Germany in one hop the other year. 10 minute catnap halfway.

Yup. I think as I got older I learned how to relax and not get so stressed out by the car miles. The cars got better too. Aircon, a great stereo system, NVH insulation - today's cars of the bog standard class meet specs you would only get on a luxury model back in the 1970s.

The problem is three fold.

1/. Its a f****ng big capital investment 2/. Whilst I could run an EV for 90% of what I do, it wont cut it for the other 10%. And owning a second car is an expense in terms of insurance, tax, MOT, and indeed parking space. 3/. The price of 'renewable electricity' that we are forced to buy is about 2-3 times the price of road diesel, making the overall financial gains very limited.

And, to cap it all, if you do go flat on the M4, its not a case of carrying a spare can in the boot is it.. I was arguing about the Beeching cuts on another forum, it forced me to remember just how bad railways were at getting you from an arbitrary A to and arbitrary B. And remember the sheer delight of owning even a piece of s*it private vehicle, that could take you anywhere you could afford to go, at a moments notice, on a whim without having to plan your journey like a military campaign armed with timetables and contingency plans for the inevitable delayed train. I dont want to have to plan ahead and prebook a slot on a charging station halfway to scotland, and have ab 'alternate' and then find that the only potion is to tank up with electricity at an equivalent cost of £2 a liter.

Or be stuck out on a snow covered motorway because there is a power cut due to lack of wind.

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Actually that is one thing that IS within the bounds of possibility, the downside is that if you get a short on a battery with that low internal resistance, it wont be a fire, it will be an explosion

However the grid does not exist that would allow those charging rates to be common, and whilst renewable energy sits at 5 times the core cost of heating oil (ex tax) and 3 times the coast of read diesel. there is f*ck all financial incentive to get a BEV, unless legislation forces you to.

If BEVs were so f****ng great there wouldn't be a diesel car left on the roads. The fact is that they are, *overall*, a worse customer experience.

And we are being forced to use them - not attracted by their cost or performance advantages - but by *legislation*. Just like windmills and solar panels.

Which proves how crap they actually are.

Yup. what you would see if this became the norm, is motorway 'filling stations' fed by small nuclear reactors.

An RR SMR could charge 200 cars simultaneously. And off peak could feed the grid. Or make hydrogen if you must...

The only way to avoid MASSIVE grid upgrades is to build SMRs where the demand is, inside or very near to towns.

And just upgrade the local loops.

I was surprised to discover I could still do it, albeit with catnap and a ferry crossing.