Also to add: the above covers trains built since the 90s, when the power electronics (IGBTs mainly) got good enough for VVVF AC drive. The railway being what it is, there are older trains use DC motors, these days with thyristor control (some previously used camshaft control, which has all been replaced). For those on AC overhead routes, power is transformed and rectified to DC before being supplied to the motor control.
I think the oldest motors out there are on the 1980s class 455s (SWR out of Waterloo) which use an English Electric 507 DC traction motor - some of these were 'recycled' from trains (4SUBs) built in 1940s. But these only run on DC third rail routes.
Here's a question for you then. I know that a DC motor also acts as a dynamo that can return electricity to the battery (regenerative braking) but what happens if the motor is AC? Does it then act as an alternator and produce alternating current? Can this be returned to the battery?
Well the main issue is the political spin glossing over severe technical issues. It's yet another example of governments meddling to show they are doing something and making a right buggers muddle as a result.
Pretty much in a nutshell They have a future as driverless urban taxis, but its all virtue signalling. The problem of moving freight around using electricity is insoluble without a massive integrated and computerised driverless railway FREIGHT system that gets a railway realistically within 15 miles of anywhere
No, they're technical. We need a quantum advance in battery technology to make these things truly viable. Anyway, we're deviating from Chris's original point about Hanna Fry's t*ts being on the small side for a TV presenter.
We have become used to ICE cars where range on a tank of fuel isn't as critical: if you start a long journey with maybe only 50 miles range, it only takes a few minutes to add more range - up to a maximum that corresponds with a full tank of fuel. With pure EV, you need to make sure the car is kept fully charged (to cater for a non-advance-warning journey) and to factor in much longer breaks if the full-battery range is less than your journey. While people may well stop on a long journey of several hundred miles, it may only be for toilet/snack/change-of-driver breaks, not for a break of an hour or so depending on how much range needs to be added.
If EVs start to have a range of 300+ miles, that probably means that most journeys can be completed without the need for a long recharging stop en route, so recharging is only necessary after the journey, so the recharge time becomes less critical. It is the combination of small battery range and long recharging time which is critical.
I'd also be concerned about the availability of charging points. Petrol stations are all over the place. Public charging points are harder to find and you may discover that all the bays in one supermarket or motorway service station are in use so you have to drive further in the hunt for an unused charger.
As a matter of interest, how does the current cost-per-mile for an EV compare with that for an ICE, given the huge increase in electricity prices over the past few months? I think electricity price has increased a lot more than petrol/diesel.
That depends. A bit like asking what your weekly shop costs. It lot depends where you shop!
In general though, public charging has gone up a lot and electricity costs are now pretty much on a par with petrol/diesel costs. Possibly even more at some chargers.
If you can charge at home and are on the right tariff, it’s still vastly cheaper than hydrocarbon fuel. For owners like myself and many other EV the cost of public charging is pretty much an irrelevance as I use public charging so seldom. My EV fuel bill still works out at less than 2p per mile.
If you *are* reliant on public charging, right now might not be the best time to ditch your ICE car. Hopefully with the new fixing of crude oil prices the cost of gas (and hence electricity) will start to drop.
Of course, a quamtum advance will the the minutest possible advance (by definitsion). As for what you actually meant, that a huge advance is needed, well that's been known for more than 100 years. That's why electric vehicles, some of which actually existed when the ICE was being introduced, rapidly went into the doldrums when it was realised that giant battery advances were not, in fact, going to be forthcoming.
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