I drive London to Aberdeen quite often. Some 560 miles. I've only ever had one car that had that range. And never wanted to drive it without a stop for a meal anyway.
I usually leave London early morning before the worst of the rush hour, and stop for breakfast at the end of the M40. Then for fuel and a coffee late morning. Arrive mid afternoon.
No they didn't, why do you think they called trolley buses,
Because the poles were called trolley poles, a name they inherited from the original systems where the collector was actually a wheeled trolley running on the wires and connected by a flex that was plugged into the buses and swapped when they met.
formatting link
Now theres an idea for charging electric cars on the move.
Pantographs are a completely different design and not capable of the deviation that a Trolley bus required. Trolley poles track a wire far better and the bus could be an adjoining lane and still be picking up power.
formatting link
No dispute that they did frequently get de wired and the system is only really suitable for relatively slow speeds especially over the cast bronze fittings in the overhead where wires branched of at junctions, this was where most dewirements took place. And it was usually a bamboo pole for lightness. Wife's cousin used to be a clippy on Bournemouth ones.
Are you saying you've used up all the range just driving there? And is there a filling station on that grass verge? A petrol car with no petrol is just as useless as an electric one with a flat battery.
The first generation had piddling batteries and couldn't be charged from the mains. They are used because many authorities have stipulated hybrids, not because they are cheap to run or are even actually clean as the battery is knackered and they run on petrol all the time. Especially so in London where they avoid the congestion charge for some odd reason.
As do lorry sleeper cabs and some top end Diesel cars where there isn't enough waste engine heat to heat the cabin some circumstances.
If allowed an auxiliary heater may be a sensible solution though the powers that be will probably insist that it meets some emission standards as well so maybe LPG powered from a small tank . If they don't allow such things assuming a pure electric will have its range reduced considerably in some circumstances then people will DIY even if that is as dangerous as using a camping stove in a car. My A35 van I had as my first road legal vehicle didn't have a heater till I put an old paraffin stove in the back ,thoughthat was mainly used overnight to get it warmish. The fumes went out the little roof vent.
So to match throughput of a typical garage fuel fill up ~5 minutes you will need about an order of magnitude more real estate when charging an electric battery for a mere third of the range. So in practice you will need about 30x as many charge points as there are petrol pumps today.
(and heaven knows how many bespoke power plug shapes)
AIUI pre-heating is the stock approach in cold climates - ie get the car good and warm while it is still plugged in. And I think there is at the very least work in progress on "storage heaters" - phase change rather than the pile-of-bricks variety :)
Or even a fuel cell. Any number of fuel cell vehicles have been produced in recent years, although they haven't caught on yet, probably because hydrogen re-fuelling stations are rather rare.
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.